The JLA and the Siblings
by LaCasta
Summary: UPDATED: Lionel gives Clark a choice. Usual disclaimer. AU: Clark and Lex raised as brothers, both now members of the JLA.
1. Default Chapter

A/N:   
Read this bit if you've not read "Kid Brother," otherwise, skip. Or read. Not my job to tell you what to do. (And the folks whose job it *is* to do what I tell them, even they don't, so there you have it.)  
  
In an AU, Lionel found Clark after the meteor shower and, noticing his powers, adopted him. He also encouraged a sibling rivalry between him and Lex, with the upshot that Clark beat Lex up quite a bit and Lex often lied to get Clark in trouble. However, with Lionel dividing his paternal attention, Lillian was able to influence Lex more before her death. An isolated Lex tried to commit suicide but Jonathan Kent saw his attempt and so the Kents became another influence. Events drew the two boys somewhat closer in a precarious sort of way. Clark was exposed to kryptonite for the first time and Lionel, thinking that he was dying, forced Lex to help him examine Clark while he was still alive. Lex instead helped Clark regain his strength and Clark took him with him as he escaped. Lionel, though regretting subjecting Clark to the ordeal, was determined to get them back, especially since he used part of the results of his study of Clark to rejuvenate himself and assumed Lex's own identity, faking his own and Clark's deaths. Clark, who finally realized what it is to feel fragile and experience pain, starts wanting to help people, a resolve which is strengthened when his first rescue gets him kissed by two women. Lionel used Clark's crush on Lana to track Clark and Lex down in Gotham. When a mysterious, bat-like stranger intervenes in his attempt to capture them again, Lex is wounded in the cross-fire and Lionel, forced to decide between capturing Clark and letting Lex die, lets them go. Batman invites Clark to join the Justice League, as Superman, and Lex agrees to take over some of Alfred's responsibilities in back-office management for the JLA.   
  
Okay, that's where we are now. The Muse decided that I should make this a sequel, more comedy-drama than the first, which was more drama.  
  
************************************************************************  
  
Lex had found the meeting draining and at its conclusion, at Alfred's suggestion, had gratefully retired to "put his leg up for a few moments," Alfred being too aware of young masculine dignity to suggest a nap.  
  
He was just emerging from a pleasant haze when he heard Clark's eager voice. "Can I handcuff it to my wrist? It just looks like I should, you know?"  
  
"That won't be necessary." That was Batman.  
  
"Could I handcuff it to yours, then?"  
  
"No."  
  
"How about-"  
  
"You don't need to handcuff anything to anybody, Clark." Lex stifled a grin.  
  
"Okay." Clark sounded disappointed. "I'll just tell Lex I'm going, I'll be upstairs in a bit." He opened the door and came in, carrying a large case.  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"It's neat. Bats asked me to take this to a refugee camp. Vaccinations. Ordinary deliveries get hijacked and sold, so..." He grinned and sat on the edge of the bed, since Lex had tossed his slacks over the chair. "How you doing?"  
  
"Just needed a quick rest." Lex raised an eyebrow at Clark's puzzled look.  
  
"Oh. I thought you and Diana..."   
  
"Yeah, we came back and had sex." Clark wriggled uncomfortably and got up to sit on the chair. "First we did it on the bed, and then in the chair, and then-"  
  
"Uh, you are joking, right?" Clark had partially stood up and sat back down.  
  
Lex let it go. "Joking. No, she's got somebody else in her life now, somebody...right for her."  
  
"Oh. Uhm, I'm sorry."  
  
Lex shrugged. "I don't think there is anyone who's right for me--some of us were just meant to be alone."  
  
"Yeah. Well, at least, you can meet people your own species," Clark muttered.   
  
"And then what?" Lex shrugged again. "Can't quite say I'm in the witness protection program." He smirked. "In a movie, of course, one of us would say that at least we've got each other."  
  
"Lex! Ewwwwwwwww!" Lex blinked as Clark repeated his exclamation.  
  
"I *meant* as siblings."  
  
"Still, ewwwww."   
  
Oh, so now Clark was in the pre-occupied with and yet self-conscious about sex stage...it would last only a short time and had to be properly taken advantage of. "Though, of course, since we're not technically..."  
  
"EWWWWWWWWWWW!"  
  
"Oh, I don't know, some people might find the thought of us together quite...exciting."  
  
"EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!"  
  
"But look, Clark, I'm already able to give you multiple ewwgasms, so..."  
  
"Coming, Batman!" Clark was out of the room very quickly. 


	2. Chapter 2

"Is it just me, or is this more like a psychodrama script than an expense report?" Lex raised his eyes from a series of papers covered with notes, lines and arrows meandering from one spot to another, and several coffee rings. A flourescent pink Post-It read, "Flash's expenses and other fictions. Just kidding! Ha ha!"   
  
"I've often been tempted to offer them to the Museum of Modern Art," Alfred replied, solemnly. "Mr. West is an exuberant individual."   
  
"That's like saying that Clark can lift weights a bit," Lex muttered, then printed the last files. "Here's the petty cash statement, here are the CDs, US Treasury bonds, and here are the current checking and savings accounts." That afternoon, they had finished reconciling all the accounts, including the ones from the time when Bruce had used them as a learning experience for Dick, resulting in notes such as "What's $1.74 among friends" and "So, maybe the bank embezzled that last 39 cents" popping up here and there in the statement reconciliations.  
  
"I think we've earned a potent drink, possibly more than one," Alfred answered.   
  
Lex grinned, an expression that by then was beginning to look as though it might belong on his face, instead of appearing and disappearing like a traveller trying to cross unfamiliar territory as quickly as possible.   
  
In the study, the two men raised the brandy snifters to each other in a silent toast. Alfred savored the liquid and then said, "Both Master Bruce and I shall miss you and your brother."   
  
"The feeling is mutual." Lex smiled again. "Though I'm not sure how much longer Bruce would have let Clark drink coffee or eat anything with sugar in it."   
  
"The 'sugar high' is a fallacy," Alfred corrected, though gently, and Lex answered, "I'm not so sure about Clark."   
  
"You have a point. The first evening they patrolled together was on the traumatic side for Master Bruce, and Master Clark had consumed a great deal of coffee." Not even Dick Grayson had ever blown a raspberry at a defeated opponent, and Clark's lung capacity and mouth muscles had made his foray into that area very impressive, but rendered Batman's customary ominous warning far less so, through contrast. Alfred's eyes stopped their veiled glinting for a moment. "Have his nightmares stopped?"  
  
"He says so." Lex's doubt showed in his voice. "I'm not sure what returning to Metropolis will do, though."   
  
Alfred had given up on attempting to dissuade the brothers, so he merely answered, "You are doing a courageous thing by returning."   
  
"Well, I'd rather see whatever it is coming, rather than have it sneak up on us." None of them had been able to make sense of Lionel's patterns of company tradings, but what appeared to be a gradual buildup in biochemistry and neurotechnology firms had alarmed them, especially when coupled with what seemed to be a plan to amass all the available meteor fragments. His hiring patterns had, Bruce commented, indicated that being accused of unethical or unprofessional conduct was a prerequisite rather than an obstacle to employment. Clark and Lex had finally decided that they'd be able to find out more in Metropolis and were planning their departure for the next day.   
  
"Hey, Lex, Alfred," Clark skidded to a stop. "We're back." Bruce Wayne followed more sedately.   
  
"Were the rats indeed trained to attack?"   
  
"Yes, but some of them also seemed to be carrying messages. Clark caught most of those, we think."   
  
"One suspects Mr. Otis Flannigan again."   
  
"Hey, there's the missing rhyme! Flannigan, again!" Alfred and Lex exchanged looks that indicated that they didn't want to know but were too piqued by curiousity not to wonder. "I was trying to make a limerick, you know? Bat and rat rhyme, so..." Clark's voice trailed off and he added, defensively, "Limericks *are* a lost art form."   
  
*Maybe it's just as well we're going,* Lex mused, trying to imagine just how well Batman would have reacted to a Clark with his adrenaline pumped by chasing rats. He ended that train of thought by deciding that some things, like what Margaret Thatcher would look like in a thong, were better not contemplated by somebody who didn't want to end up at the Arkham Asylum. 


	3. Chapter 3

"Lex smells funny."  
  
"Stuff your cracker!"  
  
"No, no. Lex smells funny."  
  
"These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise."  
  
"Come *on*. Lex smells funny."   
  
"Ding dong!"   
  
"Clark, what are you doing?"  
  
Clark straightened up and spun around. The parrot tilted its head and sidled flirtatiously up and down the perch. "Oh, hi, Lex. Nothing, just trying to get him to say my name." He'd done better casual before.  
  
Lex smirked and Clark, to try to give at least some credence to the fiction, bent his head back over the cage and repeated, "Clark. Claaaark. Come on, you can say it. Clark."   
  
"Ding dong!"  
  
"Don't look at me, you're the one who offered to parrot-sit," Lex's smirk widened. They'd moved into a small apartment just outside downtown Metropolis, and Clark had somewhat over-reacted when he heard what sounded like a strangled cry from the next-door apartment, where an elderly lady lived. On hearing the cry repeated but no other response to his shout, and alarmed that the door was unlocked, he'd charged in. It was only a few moments later that she returned from the laundry room and shrieked, seeing an unfamiliar young man emerge, wild-eyed, from her bedroom. The shriek brought Lex charging in, and there were several minutes of confusion, during which, of course, the parrot was silent and, Clark later swore, smirking just like Lex.  
  
When the confusion was settled, she'd fussed over them both, stuffing Clark full of home-made brownies and Lex slightly less full of tequila, and introduced herself as Ella Clark, a retired second-grade teacher. Clark had since returned daily for more grandmotherly spoiling and teasing and, when she went to visit a town where her geneaology hobby had found a distant relation lived, had offered to let Leviathan, her parrot, stay with him and Lex. So far, his attempts to get the parrot to say anything really interesting had failed. He was beginning to think it was personal.  
  
***  
  
Two weeks later, there was a knock at their door. Clark opened it to find a red-haired woman smiling at him. "Are you Clark or Alex?"  
  
"I'm Clark."  
  
"Martha Kent."   
  
She held out her hand and he shook it. "Uh, would you like to come in?" He rather hoped she wouldn't, since he and Lex hadn't exactly been obsessive about housekeeping.   
  
"No, I don't want to bother you, I just wanted to say hello. Ella's been telling me all about her handsome neighbors--she and I just found out we're distant cousins, and I came up to visit her while I was in the city, and thought I'd say hello. It's good to know she has such good neighbors." Lex came out of the bathroom where he'd been showering, wrapped in a towel, but before he could manage a strategic retreat at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, she looked at him, looked again, and exclaimed, "Lex?" 


	4. Chapter 4

Lex's first instinct was to grip the towel more tightly, as Martha continued to stare at him and Clark stood in the doorway, eyes wide. Realizing the delay in responding had confirmed her suspicion--and even more, realizing that he did not want to lie to her--he nodded.  
  
"Mrs. Kent." Clark's eyes grew wider still, and he seemed ready to start asking questions. "If you'll excuse me while I change, I'd actually rather like to explain."  
  
She nodded and entered, eyes and demeanor still wary. Clark followed Lex into the bedroom and Lex said, quickly, "I'd trust her with my life, Clark."   
  
"Which is exactly what you're doing, Lex! Mine, too, in case you hadn't noticed. We'd better get out of here. I can--"  
  
"Clark, it's all right." Lex finished pulling a shirt over his head. "She's...she's like Mom." He knew that was the most effective card he could play, and Clark, as he had hoped, became slightly mollified. Clark followed him out to the living room, where Martha was occupying as little as possible of the sofa while still technically being seated.   
  
Her eyes were still cool and watchful and when he smiled, trying to put her and himself at ease, she didn't respond. "Mrs. Kent, this is a very odd situation and the explanation isn't very plausible, but you must believe me."  
  
"You're leading some kind of double life," she said, flatly.  
  
His smile became genuine as he let himself be amused by the inadvertant accuracy. "In a literal sense, yes. I'm really Lex Luthor. My father is impersonating me. He faked his own death and Clark's."  
  
"Why?"  
  
Lex sighed. "Clark...has extraordinary abilities." He sensed Clark's stiffening and added, quickly, "As, I've noticed, appear fairly often in Smallville. Our father, against Clark's will, began to exploit those, which is how he was able to rejuvenate his appearance. We had to run away." Leaning forward, he continued, "Mrs. Kent, I have to ask you to keep this a secret. If our father finds us..."  
  
Her eyes had softened slightly. "What were you wearing when we first met?"  
  
Lex chuckled. "A fair share of mud and water. A sports coat, I can't remember what else. We argued about morality and you invited me for dinner."  
  
She smiled and Lex was astonished at how thoroughly relief flooded through him, leaving him limp and almost dizzy. "Lift up your shirt," she directed.  
  
Not quite sure where she was heading with this, Lex ignored Clark's start and obediently raised it. Martha leaned forward and nodded. "All right, I recognize the scar."  
  
"I'm surprised."  
  
"Jonathan has one in almost the same place, so I remembered it." Lex deliberately ignored Clark's onset of blinking.  
  
"I know, it is hard to believe, but..." Lex raised his hands and let them fall. Clark, he noticed, was still working on the possible implications of Martha's recognizing the scar.  
  
"It makes more sense than you might think." Her eyes and voice were as warm as he remembered them. "We both wondered how that accident had affected you. Jon and I both expected more of the Lex Luthor we knew, you see."   
  
"Thank you," he said, simply. He couldn't think of anything else to say and felt certain that she would understand how much her words had meant.  
  
Clark filled the silence. "Kent? Is there where you got the name?"  
  
Lex smiled, quickly. "It was the closest I could get to the opposite of 'Luthor.'" After a second's thought, he decided to be merciful. "Jonathan Kent dragged me out of the river and gave me a change of clothes. That's how she recognized the scar."  
  
Clark tried to look as though he had no idea why Lex was smirking. 


	5. Chapter 5

"Uh, would you like some coffee or something?" Clark still sounded jumpy and Lex couldn't really blame him.   
  
"Thanks, I'd love some." He wondered if it was instinct or a conscious awareness of his brother's nervousness that made her voice slower and lower and her smile of thanks so gentle. Whatever it was, it seemed to work, since Clark returned the smile, though hesitantly, as he went into the kitchen. With him out of the room, Lex felt the tension decrease as perceptibly as if it were loud music that was turned down.   
  
"You're looking well, Lex," she started, and he responded to the unasked question.  
  
"It has been going pretty well. I think it's good for both of us to be away. From Dad," he clarified, seeing a hint of puzzlement.   
  
She nodded and said, in a quieter tone, "I've heard only alarming things about Clark, but he seems about as dangerous and short-tempered as a newborn calf."  
  
"That's entirely getting away from Dad. I don't think he was the best influence on someone with...extraordinary abilities."  
  
Martha sighed. "I don't think extraordinary abilities are a good influence all by themselves. Somehow they always seem to end up in disasters."  
  
"Monkey's Paw."   
  
"Worse, I think."  
  
"How so, Mrs. Kent?" He felt a grin creeping onto his face as she turned to face him, ready to debate.  
  
"In the story, the wishes were the kinds of wishes somebody could say out loud. A hundred pounds, for a loved child to return. The meteors seem to have given abilities to the kinds of wishes we don't even want to admit to ourselves that we have."  
  
"Such as?"  
  
"Take Sasha, the bee girl. I knew her, Lex, she even came to me at the high school a few times. What she said was that she wanted to be popular. Liked. Of consequence. But what she really wanted was to dominate. To rule. To be the queen bee. That's what I mean."   
  
Clark came back and Lex saw, with amusement, that he'd tried to make things nice for the guest, finding saucers to put underneath the mugs, making sure the spoons all matched, and even apologizing that the half-and-half was still in the carton.   
  
He must have heard the end of what Martha said, as he carefully asked, in a perfectly level voice, "Oh? You're...interested in the people with abilities?"  
  
She laughed. "Not particularly, but I'm a part-time counsellor at the high school and am the faculty sponsor for the student newspaper. The editor there gives 'obsession' a whole new depth of meaning. She collects meteor stories like Elton John collects glasses. The weirder the better."   
  
Lex leaned forward. "I know I don't need to say this, but just in case, while I doubt she has our father's ear, please don't mention anything about Clark to her. Or anyone."  
  
She nodded. "I do want to tell Jonathan that you're *you*, he was...disappointed in what he thought you were doing, but not a word to anyone else. You can trust us both." Her glance took in Clark, as well, and Lex saw him relax. "And you know, if you ever need anything, you can call on us. *Anything.*" Lex had to chuckle to himself as the effect that Clark's relieved smile had on her. Finishing her coffee, she stood up. "I have to go now, but give me your number. I want to stay in touch with you both."  
  
She gave Lex a quick hug and turning to Clark, did the same. Lex caught a glimpse of his expression as he lowered his head slightly to her shoulder, and from the astonished gratitude and gratification there, saw that a Kent had again utterly enmeshed a Luthor, as Clark basked in the contact.   
  
****  
  
AN: Yup, I did rather shortcut in having Martha accept Clark's having special abilities, so tossed in a chapter that kinda fixed it--thanks for the catch!   
  
Now the REAL question--is it more entertaining keeping the boys in a state of perpetual frustration when it comes to anything hormonal or should the revived ties to Smallville lead to something for one or both? There's always the possibility of C/L (Clark/Leviathan, the parrot), of course, they can both fly, that's something in common....  
  
I think I'd pay somebody good money to get that mental image out of my brain. 


	6. Chapter 6

Lex jumped as an arm unfurled from a dash of motion and tapped him on the shoulder. "Beep beep!" Clark grinned and darted out of the room again. Lex knew what was coming next but still jumped again when a red blur defined itself into The Flash.   
  
"Have you seen that Roadrunner?"  
  
Lex silently pointed down the hall.  
  
"Thanks, pal!" The Flash disappeared in another blur.  
  
Whoever let those two watch cartoons, Lex reflected, deserved an eternity of living with the consequences. He knew, better than most, that fate seems to consider banana peels the highest form of humor. After a lifetime of calling his adopted brother a freak and resenting every single new ability that surfaced, he was now surrounded by people with extraordinary abilities in what had become his social circle, the Justice League, where Clark's abilities weren't even all that unusual. Well, there was always Alfred, in most respects, but Lex suspected there was some kind of superpower that gave the butler's eyebrows a certain expressiveness that made one millimeter of motion an entire discourse.   
  
He leaned back and contemplated his database structure. It had fields for the members' names, contact information, home base location, special abilities, and, once he got them to use the devices, GPS numbers. Some of them didn't have Social Security Numbers, so for those who didn't, he combined the day they joined the JLA with their birthdays and made the result the unique identifier. Well, not necessarily unique, but he was willing to leave something up to chance. The database was to help deploy responses to crises, not track IRS-type details, after all.   
  
Now he had to start filling in the data. When he got to Diana and special abilities, he paused, a smirk twitching at his lips. There was that thing with the...no, he could just imagine what she'd do if he put that in as a special ability, no matter how astounding it was.   
  
"Beep beep!" Clark was back, actually panting. The Flash had given him a good race, it seemed. Lex couldn't help it. He threw his head back and laughed.   
  
AN:  
  
I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!  
  
The image of Clark imitating the Roadrunner hopped into my mind in an email conversation and wouldn't leave, so being a sadistic person, I had to share. 


	7. Chapter 7

Clark squared his jaw and stuck his chin out. Somehow, the pose seemed to go well with the new suit that Alfred had made for him. He liked it, even though Alfred had said some things about the likely authenticity of Alexander's breastplate after Clark had described it to him and tried to sketch it.  
  
"But it was in the museum and everything!" he'd protested.  
  
Alfred had raised an eyebrow. "I daresay." The discussion had been cut short when Bruce and Lex returned from Bruce's lab, both wearing more soot than when they'd started their experiments and Bruce wearing rather less in the way of eyebrows. Clark decided that it was officially scary that they were both wearing the same half-sheepish expression.   
  
"Uh, guys, do you think I should wear something, more, well, more?" Both Bruce and Lex looked briefly at the general area Clark was referring to and nodded silently.   
  
"Perhaps something read?" Alfred mused, and Clark grinned and disappeared. A few moments later, he was back, carrying the red bathing trunks he'd bought upon learning that the pool dress code in Wayne Manor did not ascribe, as in the Luthor residences, to the ancient Greek customs, a lesson learned through a somewhat embarassing experience. He pulled them over the tights and posed again.   
  
"Isn't it a bit--" Bruce paused.  
  
"It is vibrant, but that seems well-suited to young Superman's personality. And with his physique, he'd have difficulties creeping up on a malefactor, in any case."  
  
"You're right, Alfred. Clark, the effect is inspiring." Clark decided that he'd just imagined the pause before the last word.  
  
"What do you think, Lex?"   
  
Lex rubbed his chin thoughtfully in response to Clark's question. "An earring? No, perhaps not. I don't think we could pierce your ear anyway, and a clip-on would just look silly." 


	8. Chapter 8

Clark jerked upright and awake. He could hear screaming. It wasn't just human voices, but the sound of steel and concrete ripping and crashing with noises that sounded like anguished voices. He leapt to the window, looking out. It was so loud, it had to be close.   
  
But he couldn't see a thing, not with his regular vision or with his x-ray vision. He shook his head in disbelief. It had to be somewhere close, he was hearing it so clearly, so clearly that he wasn't even aware of imagining the tumbling walls and buildings, the struggles of people caught in the wreckage--he saw just saw them.   
  
But the night was calm, street lights steady, cars moving at their usual paces, no matter which direction he looked. He held his hands over his ears but that did nothing to block the sounds.   
  
He couldn't be imagining it, could he? "Go away," he whispered. "Go away." As if they heard him and were responding, the sounds redoubled.   
  
Now almost terrified, he stumbled to his brother's room. At least, if Lex could hear them, he'd know he wasn't crazy, and if he couldn't, well, at least he'd know that it wasn't real. He shook Lex awake.  
  
"What is it?" Lex asked, muzzily, sitting up. Clark remembered that he could see in the dark, but Lex couldn't, and turned a light on. He didn't want to see Lex look at him if he were going crazy, he decided, and eyes lowered, asked, "Do you hear it?"  
  
"Hear what?" He stole a quick glance. More awake now, Lex looked to be concentrating. "Clark, I don't hear anything."  
  
"Nobody...screaming?" He risked another glance at Lex and saw the mingled confusion and fear that he'd never wanted to see on anybody's face when they looked at him. "Are you sure?" he asked in a voice he wouldn't have identified as his own.  
  
"What direction is it coming from?"  
  
"Everywhere," he whispered. "They don't stop."  
  
"Are they...telling you things? Or just screaming?" Lex's voice sounded too calm, too controlled.   
  
"Mostly just screaming. Sometimes it sounds like they're calling for help, but it's mostly just screaming. And things falling down, metal ripping, it sounds like whole buildings are being torn apart! Lex, I have really good hearing, but I can't see anything, anywhere, like this. No accidents, no fires, nothing!"   
  
Lex drew his legs up, underneath the covers. "Do you think it's Dad? Doing...something to you?"  
  
"It could be, I guess. But Lex, they sound so scared!"   
  
Both of them jumped as the phone rang. Clark wrapped his arms around himself. If it was Dad...and Dad could put things in his head...  
  
Lex reached for the phone, answering, coldly, "Hello."  
  
Clark heard, among all the other noises, Batman's voice. Only he sounded more perturbed than Clark had ever heard him. "There's been an earthquake here in Gotham. It's bad and we need all the help we can get. Come to the manor, the headquarters are wrecked."   
  
"We'll be there." Clark slowly loosened his arms. Lex looked up at him sharply. "You heard that? An earthquake?" At Clark's nod, he spoke quickly into the phone. "Just one more thing--this sounds crazy, but is it noisy? People screaming, buildings falling?"   
  
"Yes." It sounded as though Bruce's attention was already somewhere else.  
  
"Clark was hearing it. More than half the country away." 


	9. Chapter 9

Clark stopped running to stare at the main road leading into Gotham City. It was crumpled, torn, as though a petulant giant had picked it up, twisted and squeezed it, then carelessly dropped it. A long, jagged slab stood almost straight up, the forces of the natural world creating their own monolith to mark the destruction of the city's skyscrapers.  
  
Biting his lip and trying to block the sounds, he ran the rest of the way to Wayne Manor, often jumping over the cars that lay skewed on the street or piles of debris. Alfred, drained and red-eyed, met them at the door.   
  
"Downstairs, gentlemen." Clark had seen Alfred amused, scolding, warm, and occasionally inscrutable, but never looking so worn. While Lex was still a bit green-faced and unsteady from the run--though at least he didn't look like he was going to hurl this time--he noticed it, too and exchanged a quick, worried look with Clark.   
  
"Nothing's working, dammit!" They could hear Bruce Wayne's voice raised in helpless rage and then a thud as though something had just gotten kicked.   
  
"What's the plan?" Clark asked.   
  
"Try to stop people from dying," was the terse answer, though Clark sensed that the anger wasn't directed at him, or the others in the room, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman. "The fire trucks and ambulances are blocked, and there are maybe three-quarters of a million people trapped."  
  
Ice came in with Black Canary, and they listened, bleakly, to Bruce's quick summary of the situation.   
  
"How are we triaging?" Black Canary asked.  
  
"Without information, we can't. All the cell towers are down, the cameras we've got in the city are all knocked out, and none of the stations are broadcasting. I've got medical supplies here, Aqua and Plastic are assembling them now into emergency kits."   
  
"Here's a possibility." Clark looked over at Lex, who really wasn't that green any more, as his older brother continued. "Could we send out, say, Flash, Clark, and Robin, in the glider, to do a quick survey of the situations with the most people in danger, then come back and dispatch whoever's most suited to that particular location?"   
  
"Might I suggest that Master Clark just do the preliminary survey? He does have speed but is unfamiliar with landmarks and street names and we might need his abilities for rescues. He might also be much faster at preparing emergency kits than the rest of us."   
  
Bruce nodded. "Good. Robin, you take everything north of the cathedral, Flash, you south. Everybody else, let's help Aquaman and Plastic with the kits." With a quick smile he clapped Lex on the shoulder as he moved to follow. "Nope, Lex, you're our coordinator. Alfred will help you get anything you need."   
  
"As detailed and large a map as you can find," Clark heard as he left with the others.  
  
***  
  
It was less than two minutes before everything was assembled into what Clark guessed were 350 or so kits. They filled the room but when he thought of how many people needed them, it seemed so paltry.   
  
"Flash's back! Get back up here!" Alfred shouted and despite himself, Clark had to grin at the fact that instead of announcing Flash's arrival and requesting their presence, Alfred shouted like a parent calling kids to dinner in the movies and on television.  
  
"There are about 400 people trapped, but okay so far, in the Morton building. The roof fell through the floors but is still intact, it's even sheltering them. But they can't get out and the Insco tower looks ready to fall. If it does, it'll probably smash right through."   
  
"Anybody in the Insco?" Diana asked.  
  
Flash winced, "Not alive. It burnt pretty badly."   
  
Lex nodded, thinking. "Ice, could you freeze the tower, encase it so it won't fall?"  
  
"Can't say for certain but I can give it a shot."   
  
"Take the other glider. Alfred's prepping it now. Anything else that looks ready to fall and do damage?"   
  
"Maybe the KGC tower. There are people in the top floors but the stairs are all blocked. Maybe freezing the bottom would hold it steady."   
  
"You know where the buildings are?" Ice nodded and ran out.   
  
"What else is there?"   
  
"A lot of people in the high rises on 17th. I couldn't see much but the one fire rescue team had a heat sensor and he said there were lots of people in there but they need to get to them soon, a lot of them are...losing heat. Blood loss or shock or dying."   
  
"Clark, can you dig them out?"   
  
He felt his throat clench but got out a "Yeah."   
  
"How are the hospitals? Did you see any of those?"  
  
"Morgan General is gone. Wayne Med looks like it lost power but it's pretty intact."   
  
"Where is it on the map, in relation to 17th?"   
  
Flash put a finger on the map. "This's 17th and Wayne's over here."   
  
"I'll take kits since there is a rescue team there," Clark said, swiftly. Emergencies or no emergencies, coordinator or no coordinator, he still wasn't going to take an actual *order* from Lex if he could help it. With a mental "So there," he grabbed an armload and sped off. 


	10. Chapter 10

There were inefficiencies--delays that could have been avoided, dispatching that could have been more effective--but Lex seemed to feel the moment when everything settled into the right patterns and routines. It felt as though finally machinery that had been grinding started purring. Either that or he'd had so much coffee he was starting to hallucinate. Or maybe it was shock at the equipment he was using. Bruce had arranged to send most of the Cave's self-generated power onto the city grid, using only the minimum needed for their own operations, so Lex and Alfred were using different colored pushpins to track activities and needs, rather than the computers.   
  
Flash returned and after delivering reports and request for assistance, picked up the list of messages, muttering them aloud as a second check.   
  
"When Clark's done delivering the new generator to the hospital, he'll go to evacuate the Hudson Towers. All the buildings in imminent danger of collapsing are shored or frozen, so Diana will pick Ice up and take her to the third and fourth emergency treatment outposts. Uh, what's she going to do there? I can't remember if she's done emergency outposts before."  
  
Without looking up from the map where he was noting the three now fully-evacuated buildings, Alfred answered, "First aid. Stop severe bleeding and immobilize compound fractured limbs. But only if they'll get treated in the next fifteen minutes and there's danger from blood loss."   
  
"Got it. Aquaman probably isn't done yet finding out what the damage is to water supplies and sanitation lines, but if he is, get his report and bring it back and send him to guide the small craft bringing medical supplies by boat. Find out if Canary's had any luck with improvising sonar to find survivors. If she hasn't and doesn't think it will work, she'll help finish evacuating the Piedmont Building. If it does work or she thinks it will in less than five minutes, I find Robin and have him bring her the glider and he'll help evacuate the hostel on 17th. Last, I check the Warkins factory to see if they need any HazMat supplies. Okay, all that's clear."  
  
When he had gone, Alfred stepped back and contemplated the map. Lex, seeing his expression, swallowed hard and turned away, as if he could avoid the truth by avoiding the other man's eyes. Alfred's mild voice was nonetheless inexorable. "While a candle might light the darkness, it can't turn night into day." Lex slowly nodded and picked up the box that held the blue pins that marked looting and rampages of mass violence. It was the first box that was empty. The boxes of green, for safely evacuated buildings, of red, for places where medical stations had been set up, and yellow, for places where enough individuals were unharmed that they could help the injured themselves, remained almost completely full. The boxes of white, for areas where there was still danger of extensive casualties, and transparent pins, for areas where the danger was still present but less extreme, were missing a handful of pins. The predominant color on the map was blue.   
AN: All I can say is that when I sat down, I was expecting to violate canon and make the presence of the JLA make a difference. Not make everything all rosy and shiny but, you know, an emphasis on what they could do rather than what they couldn't. But what came out...well, you see!  
  
That'll teach me to think that I know where these @#$()@#$(@)_*% fics are going.  
  
That raucous sound you hear? That's the Muse laughing her head off. 


	11. Chapter 11

"I insist, sir. Nobody can make sound and split-second decisions while in a state of exhaustion. Not even you." Lex could sympathize with Bruce. It had been more than 48 hours of nonstop activity, and once Alfred noticed that Lex had had to correct his placement of pins and had muddled names, he had sternly sent Lex to the cave's cot to sleep. Lex had driven a hard bargain, though, finally agreeing to sleep for four hours only if Alfred promised to do the same immediately afterwards.   
  
Bruce, almost seeming to retreat into his Batman persona, silently pointed to the map and Alfred sighed. "It only confirms the necessity of resting so you can perform mentally and physically. Better that you be out of commission for two hours now than to make a careless mistake and be injured or killed, thus able to do nothing. Some of the League are able to function without sleep, but you are not among them."   
  
"All right. Two hours. No longer." As if he had been keeping his bones steady only through force of determination, he sagged as he walked to the cot, pulled off his shoes, and lay down. Lex looked away in a sudden, bitter flood of envy at Alfred's unguardedly loving and paternal look at the sleeping man.  
  
Flash's return interrupted his thoughts. "Did it work?" Alfred asked, gesturing for Flash to speak quietly.  
  
"A bit." Looting and violence had escalated even more during the night. Hoping to use Batman's reputation as a deterrent, since there were still so many rescues to be made, Robin had driven the Batmobile through some of the worst areas. "But it won't last. Not unless we can--"   
  
Lex had no awareness of falling, just of the mind-numbing pain in his knees as he got up. Part of his mind noted that he'd been thrown at least eight feet, possibly more, horizontally, and possibly a foot vertically. "Aftershock," he muttered, as though identifying it made the least difference. Alfred had been knocked into Flash and as he extended a hand to help him rise, Lex thought that if it hadn't been the case, the older man might have broken several bones. Flash was holding a wrist that was already swelling and Bruce was lying, silent, on the floor, the blanket which had been thrown with him covering his torso and head. Hissing with the sensation that his bones were grinding at one another with each step, Lex limped over and lifted it. His eyes were closed but he was breathing steadily. Alfred said, his voice shaking almost as much as the ground had, "I'll get a medical kit," and went into the storage room while Flash and Lex stared silently at one another, not wanting to imagine the additional devastation.   
  
***  
Clark couldn't say that his body was tired, just that he was aware of effort as he ran or lifted objects. He suspected that his appearance was probably what was scaring the little girl into immobility, as he could only imagine how grimy he was and how much blood and soot covered his clothing. He tried again to call to her to come out. His own build was far too big to fit through the tiny openings in the pile of rubble and in any case, he was supporting the concrete slab that would crush her if it fell.   
  
"Who's in there?" Clark only just prevented himself from jumping at the sound of an unfamiliar female voice behind him. He carefully kept the beam balanced as he turned slightly, but it almost crumpled in his hands as he saw the figure approaching. She might be dressed like a cat but she was certainly shaped like a female.   
  
"A girl. I can't get her to come out, she's scared and I can't get in."   
  
"I can," she answered, almost flippantly, and she crouched, then crawled through the openings. Reaching the girl, she paused, as if pondering some interesting abstract thought, then twitched so that her tail curved around in front of her.   
  
"Meow," she said after the long pause, and the girl giggled.  
  
"Come on, kitten," the woman urged, and after hesitating for a moment, the girl let the woman pull her up into the opening. "Take my tail," she whispered, as if it were a secret, and she and the girl crawled out to safety. Clark let the beam goand turned to face them.  
  
"I've been watching you," the woman said, casually.  
  
"Oh. Uhm, really?"   
  
"Yes, really." He couldn't tell if she was laughing at him or at herself and he felt a blush rise to his cheeks. "I know you're not from here because if you were, I'd know you."  
  
"Uh, no." It was just plain wrong that her voice could sound so much like a purr. "Who are you?"  
  
"A friend. At least for right now," she added.   
  
"Why were you watching me? What do you want?"   
  
She seemed suddenly much younger as she dropped the sultry facade. "To help."   
  
"Right. Uhm, there are a lot of us, well, a few, we're kind of coordinating things. I can take you there and we can figure it out."  
  
"I'm not much of one for taking directions."  
  
He managed to grin. "Me neither. So I just call 'em suggestions."  
  
***  
  
Lex and Bruce looked bleakly at one another and Lex wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. After three days of aftershocks, which brought with them two tsunamis, Gotham City was a scene of destruction. With nowhere to bury bodies and fear of further disease, funeral pyres swallowed hundreds of bodies each hour.   
  
"They said that it wasn't feasible," Bruce spat. "Not feasible. The only thing I got was a few hours delay." After Bruce Wayne's visit to Congress to plead for funds to provide relief, the situation worsened. The federal government had resolved to declare the city a No Man's Land, to dynamite the bridges that Aquaman and Clark had laboriously rebuilt, at least enough to allow people to flee the city, to leave it isolated to its own devices. Both men knew that his appeals probably had made things worse--he'd made enough enemies who saw a chance to deal, if not a mortal blow, a serious wound to Wayne Enterprises. Some of them were the politicians, some the corporations or organizations which owned the politicians.   
  
Lex and Alfred had, during Bruce's absence, totaled up all the available resources. Most of the Manor's priceless artworks were now rubble, as valueless as the broken wood and stone around them. Wayne Enterprises stock was at a record low and being driven lower. Even if he liquidated all his holdings, the amount Bruce would be able to raise would be almost risable against the needs. Even the most optimistic estimates would have sufficed only to restore a few blocks.   
  
Lex stared at his hands. He knew a way to obtain the money. He just wished it weren't the only way. 


	12. Chapter 12

Clark had been convinced that the woman dressed like a cat liked him. He even figured he had a chance with her more than liking him--a woman who dressed up like a cat might not be too fussy about his not being exactly normal. Through his rounds, she was able to get into corners he couldn't. He'd been a bit concerned but she hadn't thrown a hissy fit--and he imagined she could be really good at that--when they had to deal with rescue dogs. She was pretty brave, too. He'd kind of freaked when they'd heard a woman scream and she said that she'd take care of it and tore off in that direction. That was fine, since he was trying to get some debris cleared so he could fix a water line that was gushing like there wasn't already a shortage, but she had *claws*, serious claws, that she'd concealed before, and when she came back, they were, well, reddish. No, definitely red.   
  
But boy was he wrong about her maybe thinking of him as a boyfriend. He took her back to Batman's cave place and the moment that he saw her and she saw him, well, he could have started a brass band rehearsal and they wouldn't have noticed. Not that they acted like they liked one another, in fact, Batman kind of snapped, "How did you get in here?" but Clark knew chemistry when he saw it.  
  
He wondered if maybe his feelings were too transparent. Dad had lectured him about that a couple hundred times. A month. He'd caught Lex looking at him, well, as though there was something he wanted to say but didn't know how, or something like that. It happened a couple times, even after, big surprise, Batman and the cat woman went off together. Well, yes, to check out a rumor that everybody in Arkheim was being let out, but still, he bet they wouldn't talk about the weather on the way over. Even if they didn't talk, they'd smolder at one another. But even though Lex was giving him those weird, appraising, almost sad looks, he was glad that Lex wasn't saying anything.  
  
He left again to help get people who wanted to go out of the city before the bridges were dynamited. He'd still be able to help them after, but it'd be a lot easier. He did grin a bit to himself, remembering how Flash had looked dubious, and then seriously impressed when Clark suggested that once the bridges are gone, they could put people in buses and he'd carry them over.   
  
When he came back, Lex and Alfred were poring over some spreadsheets and reports. "Clark, did Dad ever talk to you much about Wayne Industries?"   
  
"Sometimes, but nothing really detailed. Sometimes about how he beat them to a contract and how he did it or how they beat him and how they did it. And a couple of times, he mentioned them when he said that you have to know your opponent as well as you know yourself. If they make a mistake or have a weakness, it might not be obvious unless you really know them." He looked at the different sheets.   
  
Lex half-smiled. "This weakness is pretty obvious. He's made an offer to buy a controlling share of the stock."  
  
Clark did some mental calculations. "He can't have that much cash, would the rest be in LuthorCorp stock?"   
  
Alfred shook his head. "Options rather than stock. About twenty percent of the cash within a week of acceptance, the remaining amount over the next two years at four percent interest."  
  
"That's not a great deal. For Wayne, I mean."   
  
Lex raised an eyebrow. "Now, it's about the best deal there is on the table. Some of the others are practically derisory. Wayne Enterprises is now actually a risky investment."   
  
"Of course, many of its holdings are unaffected by this calamity," Alfred continued. "But since Master Bruce's personal wealth is so hard-hit, he's expected to sell at least some shares, which is forcing the price down."   
  
Lex did that split-second half smile again. "The problem with acquiring a reputation as a philanthropist is when a disaster like this hits, everyone knows you're going to want cash and lots of it."   
  
Bruce had come in quietly--without the cat woman, Clark immediately noticed--and said, equally quietly, "Which I do. And Luthor knows that prices for everything we need, medical supplies, security equipment, everything, are going to skyrocket because of demand. He should know, he controls enough of the markets."   
  
"I hate to do it, but I'd have to advise you to sell." Clark wondered why Lex looked so blank, like he'd deliberately wiped off signs not just of his feelings, but his thoughts.   
  
"It's my only option. Alfred, tell him I accept."  
  
Lex looked up, as though he'd had a sudden thought. "We've, Clark and I, still got a healthy bank account. We can close it out. What's needed most?"  
  
"Water purification chemicals," Bruce answered promptly. "The reservoirs are all contaminated. Some of the equipment is working, or rather, would if the reserves hadn't all been in that one warehouse. If you can do that, then I can spend the rest of what I've got on food and bribing enough people to let boats come through."   
  
"Right. Clark, we can go back to Metropolis, I'll close the account and get it as a cashier's check, you can get and deliver the chemicals, I'll see if I can find anything Bruce can use to leverage even just a better deal."   
  
Bruce must really feel kicked in the teeth, Clark thought, as the former billionaire nodded, slowly. The earthquake and everything that was happening to other people, most of his possessions destroyed, and having to sell that much of his company. It was kind of like him and Lex, Bruce wouldn't ever be poor, but Clark would bet that he felt like it then. 


	13. Chapter 13

Lex grimaced as, alone in the apartment, he dialed. He could just envision his father applying a carefully-crafted formula to the number of times that he let the phone ring. One if you want to try to catch the person off guard, six or seven if you want to make them worried or over-think their strategy, more than that if you wanted to make them angry.   
  
Instead of any of those, his father picked up on the fourth ring. "Well done, my boy. He accepted the offer."  
  
"It helps to have the very best insider information," Lex answered, dryly.   
  
"So it does." He sounded very pleased with himself and Lex could hardly blame him. "I'm looking forward to next Wednesday. I'd ask you to tell Clark that I'm really very impressed with how he's making a name for his alter-ego, but that would hardly do, would it?"  
  
"Unless there's any more gloating you'd like to accomplish, I'd better go. Clark might be suspicious."   
  
"Till Wednesday, Lex."   
  
What gnawed at Lex was that neither Clark nor Bruce was likely to be suspicious. Both of them trusted him. Not the kind trust born of circumstance, where one knows that the odds of betrayal are low because treachery wouldn't be in a partner's best interest, but the kind that's born of the partner believing in one. The way his mother had believed in what he could be and accomplish. Well, it wouldn't turn out the way she'd have thought his destiny might be.   
  
"Hey, why did you lock up?" He hadn't even heard Clark come in. The question was teasing.  
  
"Habit. Knowing your tendency to oops me."  
  
"It was just the one time," Clark protested.  
  
"But sufficiently traumatic for both of us, don't you think?" Clark grinned. There were still signs of strain on his face but he was resilient, Lex decided, hoping he was right.  
  
***  
  
"Civilization, I fear, is inherent in only a few men and women, a mere habit in most." Alfred handed Lex a glass of cognac.   
  
"There's a lot of evidence for your theory right outside." During the week, the societal infrastructure had collapsed almost as profoundly as the physical, after the federal declaration of Gotham as a No Man's Land. People who might have fought if they'd been forced to stay were fleeing in droves. Only those with exceptional devotion to the city and those suffering in it, or those who saw their chance to be utterly free of the law were staying. Everybody else was leaving--even if they hadn't yet, it was a matter of weeks. While assisting them was indeed a rescue operation, Bruce looked gloomier and gloomier each time a new group left.   
  
The money he'd gotten for his shares of Wayne Enterprises was enough to provide facilities for medical care and the necessary medicines and equipment and to continue purifying the water and providing food distribution. It had prevented the further spread of disease but accomplished little else. Clark had negotiated with the various crime leaders to ensure that as long as the facilities would treat anybody without question and report nobody to the remnants of the police or to Batman, the facilities and their personnel would be immune from thefts or attacks. Lex suspected that his negotiation wasn't entirely based on reason and logic and that intimidation had entered in. There was still plenty of Luthor, as well as a teenager with moods of steel, in Clark.   
  
Bruce came in, frowning. "What do you think about this?" He put a piece of paper on the table.  
  
It was a press release from LuthorCorp, announcing, in the clearest possible language, the CEO's intention of funding and overseeing the rebuilding of Gotham City. He had already entered discussions with the city's remaining official leaders and would arrive the next day, Wednesday.   
  
"It is likely to be profitable, given enough investment and little enough attention to the more scrupulous details." Lex commented. "He likes challenges and this is one. If he wins, he'll practically own the city and have an unbeatable reputation. Not just for business, but for civic-mindedness and any other associated virtues. There wouldn't be much that he couldn't do with that. He'll win, I've no doubt." To himself, he thought, Jacta alea est. Caesar's words on re-entering Rome, either to conquer or be destroyed: The die is cast. 


	14. Chapter 14

"The only thing missing is that theme music from 2001," Bruce Wayne muttered.  
  
"Also sprach Zarathustra. By Richard Strauss," Alfred supplied, and for a moment shared the glare that had been solely directed at the television.   
  
"Now *that* was a cool movie." Wally West got part of the glare, too.  
  
It was only a short while after the apparent Lex Luthor's arrival that at least some television service was restored to Gotham and all the available stations were live on the scene as he toured the city. Clark was finding it creepy and he suspected that Lex was even more weirded out by it than he was. No wonder Lex had mumbled something about needing to do some stuff and left. Clark had half-risen but Lex had looked at him oddly and gestured for him to stay. Must be extra weird, wanting to be alone for a bit but knowing that somewhere out there, your own father is wearing your identity. Kind of like the opposite of a split personality or something. Oh, well, Lex'd get over it, Clark decided. He didn't really want to get a glare himself so he kept his wish for popcorn to himself. Especially since Bruce had been pissier even than early-morning pre-coffee Lex ever since Clark had met that woman dressed as a cat.  
  
Leaving those thoughts for later, Clark returned his attention to the television. Dad was talking about how all the threads that built the great social fabric of Gotham City must be brought together, government, corporations, small businesses, philanthropists, individuals, long-term residents and new arrivals, to rebuild the city to take its place again as one of the world's hubs for commerce and culture alike. "I *think* that means he's rebuilding the opera house first," Clark translated.  
  
A reporter asked what the cost of rebuilding would be and got a knowing smirk. "We're still making the estimates but the thing I know for certain is this. The cost of not rebuilding is far greater, for this city and for this nation." A smattering of applause started and Clark was pretty sure that it was spontaneous. "There are *some* promises made that some big businesses didn't want to keep, but we'll make sure they do keep to their word." That was a dig at some of the big insurance companies which had threatened to declare bankruptcy if made to pay the full coverage or had suddenly started contesting values and costs of rebuilding. This time, a knowing, even conspiratorial laugh moved through the crowd as though it were an entity in its own right. "And I think that we can make a successful case for federal assistance. Several members of Congress have expressed their support for an aid package." Clark was pretty sure that that was a dig at Bruce but didn't want to turn and look.   
  
Lionel stepped to the side where a crowd was watching and dealt a full measure of charm, sprinkled with smiles and handshakes. "Betcha a dollar he does," whispered Flash.  
  
"No way," Clark whispered back.  
  
"Two bucks."  
  
Alfred coughed and Clark looked up. "Oh, sorry. Flash thinks he's actually going to--"  
  
"He did it! He really did it!"  
  
"Kiss a baby," Clark finished gloomily and reached in his pocket. 


	15. Chapter 15

Clark wondered if he was having some kind of Stephen King Special day. He'd gotten sick of waiting for a good phone connection and decided to come see the Kents himself. But he couldn't see anybody in the house or the big barn. He knew it was kind of silly, but he knocked before using his x-ray vision, just because well, it seemed like it was polite, and he really liked Mrs. Kent.   
  
He looked around and was astonished at how relieved he felt when he saw a couple of figures and one of them was Mrs. Kent, waving her arms at cows. He wasn't sure about using his speed, in case there was anybody around, so he just ran quickly, a bit faster than normal human speed.  
  
Mrs. Kent seemed pretty excited and as he got closer, he figured that the break in the fence wasn't normal and that the cows weren't supposed to be roaming around eating things. There was a tall blond man fixing the fence and looking kind of exasperated. When Mrs. Kent heard him behind her, she still gave him a warm smile and a nice, "Hello, Clark" before blocking a cow from heading to the road.  
  
"Uh, did the cows escape?" He hadn't really heard of cows breaking out but then he didn't know that much about them.  
  
"The newest one just broke a hole in the fence and led the others out. They're not dangerous, just curious and eating the crops." He wondered for a moment if she thought he was scared of cows then decided that she wasn't.  
  
"Oh. Is that your husband?" She nodded but like she wasn't quite sure where he was going with this. "Could I help?" It was a change from rescuing people, at least. Part of him really liked showing off and it wasn't like there was any emergency, just a bit of weirdness, and he didn't want to think more about weirdness, at least for a bit.  
  
"Sure, just..."   
  
Clark peered into the neighboring house--just, he told himself, to make sure that nobody else could see, even though it was *her* house--and didn't see anybody. He advanced on the cow, not quite sure of exactly the best way to do things, and finally just hefted her up and carried her back inside the enclosure. He looked back at Mrs. Kent and smiled a bit more timidly than he'd expected to. "It's pretty easy," he confided, as he returned for another cow. She still looked stunned and her husband, whose name Lex had mentioned a couple of times but he'd forgotten, looked even more confused.   
  
After a few moments and more than a few shakes of his head, Mr. Kent returned to fixing the fence while Mrs. Kent blocked any of the cows from leaving again. A few of the cows gave him what he figured were dirty looks in Cowese and he was pretty sure that the one that mooed at him was telling him to go away but none of them seemed to get really angry.  
  
When the last cow was in, Mrs. Kent looked at him as though she were adding things in her head. "Lex said that you had some special abilities," she said, slowly. Her husband got up from hammering the last post back and came towards them, looking pretty confused, too.  
  
"Yeah. Hi, I'm Lex's brother, Clark."  
  
"Jonathan Kent. Martha said that she'd met you." Mr. Kent's handshake was about as strong as any Clark had encountered but his eyes looked noncommital, not hostile but not welcoming the way that she had been.   
  
"That's kind of why I'm here, actually. Have you seen Lex?"   
  
"No, not since that time in Metropolis. What's wrong?"  
  
"I bet nothing, it's just that nobody's quite sure where he is, and I knew how much he likes you and wondered if maybe he'd..." He decided to be annoyed instead of letting himself stay a bit worried. "I bet he's just doing stuff somewhere but since he's always Amazing Lecture Man about me letting somebody know where I am all the time, at least while Dad's around, I was thinking maybe...you know, he's got a real high IQ but he can be pretty stupid sometimes."  
  
"I'm not following everything here," Mr. Kent said, frowning. "Is Lex in some kind of trouble?"  
  
"I don't think so, I'd just like to know that he isn't." Mrs. Kent nodded like she knew exactly what he meant, which encouraged him to go on. "He's not anywhere I looked so I thought maybe..." Clark decided that Mr. Kent was as okay as Lex said he was. He really liked the way that when he asked if Lex was in trouble, he sounded like he wasn't going to offer to help, he was just *going* to help. "Anyway, if you've not seen him, I'll check a couple other places."   
  
She looked like she saw that part of him was worried and that she was kind of worried, too, but she wasn't going to let him know that she knew. "Let us know when you find him, okay? We'll keep an eye out, too."  
  
"Yeah." He wasn't quite sure what to say but when he looked at her again, the expression on her face was exactly like Mom's, when she knew that something was wrong, just before she'd hug him. It was always real quick, unless he held on, as though she was telling him by being that quick that she loved him and would listen to him but that she wouldn't push. When she gave him exactly the same quick squeeze, he really understood why Lex always looked that way when he mentioned her. It was remembering Mom and wishing she were there but at the same time knowing how much Mom loved him and thinking that somehow she was still somewhere still loving him. For a moment he was jealous of Lex, who could hug her back as tight as he wanted. But this was still the best thing that had happened in a long time. 


	16. Chapter 16

Clark hadn't quite mastered a graceful takeoff from the ground and wasn't really comfortable enough with the Kents to ask if he could jump off their roof, so he was finishing giving the cows an "I'm the boss of you" look in case they decided to try jailbreak again when a car pulled up.  
  
He felt an idiotic grin spread over his face as the driver got out and ran towards them. "I got it! I got the column!" It was the girl at the newspaper, Chloe. Her hair had had been fluffier before, touching it would have been a bit like touching a dandelion, but now it was smoother and silkier. He liked that just fine, too. Her smile was just the same and that was even better than fine with him.   
  
"Chloe! I'm so proud of you!" Mrs. Kent hugged her and Mr. Kent was smiling as he punched her lightly on the shoulder. Clark shifted his weight from foot to foot and then realized she was looking at him. *Okay, feet, move. Right, then left. You got it.*  
  
"Well, hi! I never expected to run into you again." She was looking up at him like seeing him was a good thing. "I didn't know you know the Kents?"  
  
It was very definitely a question. "I'm a neighbor of a relative of Mrs. Kent's. I, uh, just dropped by."   
  
"I met Clark on a newspaper tour in Gotham City," Chloe explained.*Okay, legs, stay steady. The brain is the only part that needs to process that she remembered your name.*   
  
"I didn't think you'd remember me." *Way to go, Luth..Kent, that's the way to impress her.* "I mean, I know I did, remember you, that is, but..." He gave up on talking and tried to referee the debate going on in his head. One group of brain cells was telling him that he pulled people out of burning buildings and didn't get scared, he could ask her out for coffee, just to celebrate. Another group was snorting at those cells and saying that yeah, it's not like the people in the building burning would have turned him down and she would. She probably has a boyfriend already and a line around the block if there's ever a vacancy in that department. A third group was telling him not to listen to either, that he couldn't exactly stroll down the streets of Smallville without a lot of people thinking that he looked like Clark Luthor, but the group that had the final word was the one that said that he was wearing glasses, his hair was lighter, Alfred had taught him about walking differently, saying that it was how you walked that gave away a disguise more often than not, and that it's not like he spent that much time downtown anyway when he was in Smallville and he should say something before she decided he'd forgotten how to talk. "If, uh, you don't have anything planned, uh, maybe if there's a coffee place or someplace, we could celebrate a bit?"  
  
She looked at him as though he were a *really* nice present somebody gave her, grinned again, and said, "Coffee? I haven't had any in an hour, so I'm way overdue." Mrs. Kent was pursing her lips a bit like she saw how nervous he was but wasn't really laughing at him. Not quite with him because he hadn't been laughing, but like she'd been there, done that, and knew what it was like. "I'm also proud to say that this is about the only Starbucks-free town I know." She hugged Mrs. Kent again, "You didn't even say 'I told you so,'" and looked a bit surprised when Clark got to the car door before she did and opened it.   
  
When he got to the other side, he looked over at the Kents. "I'll let you know when I catch up with him," and waved before getting in.  
  
"So you're all Kents but not related, right?"  
  
"Yeah. Kind of a coincidence but not really, it's not a rare name, I guess."  
  
"In this town, there *are* no coincidences. It's all one conglomerate of weirdness, centered right here. Mutants, Greek drama mysteries, people going whacko, but no coincidences."   
  
Okay. Mutants he got. People going whacko he got. "Greek drama mysteries?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, two of the Luthor family lived here for a while, the two sons." She looked right at him, which scared him for a bit until he realized she was just being dramatic. "You know about the Luthors, right?"  
  
"Kinda."   
  
"The Greek drama bit is that the younger brother, Clark, had an accident and a friend and I found him. I went to get help and found the older brother, Lex." Clark blinked. He didn't remember having an accident and meeting her. "Lex took him away and next thing you know, Clark and the dad are both dead."  
  
"Oh. What do you think happened?"   
  
She shrugged and Clark was momentarily distracted. "Dunno. Some people said that Lex was a nice enough guy, just weird. Kind of like the castle ghost found a body and wasn't quite sure what to do with it for a long time. But then, he's really doing a lot to help Gotham City, so I think if there's something weird, it's not like he killed them off." Clark was still trying to take all this in when his phone rang.  
  
"Sorry." He checked the display, the call was from Gotham. That must mean the phone system was just about back up and it was probably Lex, about to start a lifetime of getting it rubbed in that Mr. Leave Word with Somebody didn't. "Hey."  
  
It was Alfred. "Master Clark?" He sounded worried.   
  
"What is it?"  
  
"If you're in a position to return immediately, it would be wise to do so." Clark performed the mental translation into "Get your ass back here NOW."   
  
"Sure, but what's..."  
  
"It appears that your brother has switched loyalties."   
  
AN: I'm going to be out of town until about the end of the month, probably only access to email, so if I'm not posting for a while, that's why! I shouldha known the Muse would come back with a cliffhanger just for the occasion... 


	17. Chapter 17

"Screw that! No way!"  
  
"I'm afraid so."  
  
"No way! Look, I'll be there, get everything figured out, and then-" And then I'll apologize really sincerely to Chloe, he added, when he noticed she was looking at him with "oh, I remember, you were on the cover of Weirdos Monthly magazine" eyes.   
  
"Please come as soon as possible."   
  
"I'm really sorry, something else just came up, if you could drop me downtown I'll get it fixed and meet you at the coffee place in, oh, twenty minutes?" It wouldn't take more than that to get everything okay since there was no way that Lex had sided with anybody but them.   
  
"Can't I drop you wherever you're actually going?" The caption on that cover photo was "Man of the Year."   
  
"No, thanks, actually, I can just get out here," he scrambled out, hitting his head on the doorframe and barely remembering to rub it as though it hurt.  
  
Just when I actually had a real live kind of semi-date. Thank you so much, Lex, I really appreciate it, he grumbled in his mind as he started running once he couldn't see Chloe and the car any more. By the time he hit full speed, though, one thought occured to him--after this, Lex couldn't gripe any more about that time in Gotham with that girl with the enormous bra busters--and he grinned.   
  
****  
  
Thoughts strolled through Lex's mind like a slinky model making her grand but every so casual entrance at a party. One that paused to be examined was: This is what a bed is all about. Soft linen bottom sheet and pillow case, silk upper sheets. Perfect tactile sensations without inadvertant bed-skiing.   
  
The next thought was that the service was just as good. He was thirsty and the blue bottle on the bedside table was still sweating, as though it had been taken from the refrigerator just in time to be ready for him to wake up.   
  
He pulled himself up, leaning against the quilted headboard, and took a long swallow. A king-sized bed, no less. He'd have to start issuing invitations.   
  
He couldn't describe the situation as being exactly what he wanted, but under the circumstances, it wasn't bad at all.   
  
***  
  
"It's got to be a fake. Or maybe not a fake. A look-alike. There could be lots of them out there!" Clark folded his arms across his chest.   
  
"We ran every test there is, Clark."   
  
"Well, they don't work!" *Stupid Diana.*   
  
"The combination of tests, comparison of pace length, arm movements, features mapping, would mean the chance of a mistake is one in several million."  
  
"So? People still win the lottery sometimes." *Stupid Alfred.* "The odds against anybody winning are one in several million."   
  
"Clark, none of us want to believe it. But the facts are right there. There was no sign that he was under coercion, he even looked like he was hesitating before going in." Clark couldn't stand that *reasonable* voice that Batman used sometimes. He grabbed the tape and crushed it. That'd show them he wasn't convinced.   
  
"Then it wasn't Lex." He'd watched it five times. Lionel had taken up the first floor of the court building as a makeshift headquarters for the relief efforts and had given a press conference outside, in the middle of the plaza. One of the news cameras had been doing montages of the crowd and the buildings, both ruined and usable, surrounding the square. He had to admit that the figure that, keeping to the edges of the listening crowd, made its way to the court building, seemed to hesitate, then opened the door and went in, well, yes, fair enough, it looked a lot like Lex. But it wasn't. Period. "I don't know where he is right at the moment but he's not changed sides."   
  
He didn't want to talk about it any more and looked at his watch. It had been an hour and he'd told Chloe twenty minutes. He turned for the door.  
  
"Where are you going, Clark?"   
  
Yeah, like Batman could boss *him* around. "Out!" He started running.   
  
She wasn't in the coffee shop any longer, he realized, looking around. A waitress came up and asked if she could help him. "Yeah, I was supposed to meet somebody here but I was late and..."  
  
"Who was it?"   
  
"Her name is Chloe, she's blond-"  
  
The waitress laughed. "No need to describe her here, she only goes home because it isn't 24-hour. Sorry, but she left about five minutes ago."  
  
She'd waited for him. A long time. He didn't know whether he felt better that she waited or worse. "Oh."   
  
The waitress grinned. "She's always in here. I'd bring lots of flowers or something tomorrow."   
  
"I'm not sure I could make it." He looked around the shop once more and then left. No Chloe, no Lex. This day officially sucked.   
AN:  
  
Reviewing lets you lose 30 pounds in five minutes or alternatively, add a little heft wherever you might want it!!! I got that info in an email so it must be true. 


	18. Chapter 18

Clark threw another broken chair against the wall, where the wood shattered. Just for good measure, he burnt the shattered pieces with a glare, before they even fell. They'd better not know that he could hear them talking about him.   
  
"That, I think, was one of the smaller pieces of furniture." Yeah, Alfred thinks he knows *everything.*   
  
"What's the last count?" And if Bruce didn't stop sounding so above-it-all amused and just a bit sorry for him, the Bat was going to find out whether or not his stupid mask would fit anywhere else.   
  
"I think that's the tenth."  
  
"Well, it saves some landfill space." No, he'd *make* it fit. So hard that it'd end up on his head again after all.  
  
They all just thought that the question was like Where's Waldo? You get an answer and that's it. "Where's Lex? Defected. Next page?" The way they'd just *looked* at him when he said that it had got to be some kind of mind game of Lionel's and for all they knew, Lex might need their help.   
  
He went out and did things for everybody in the city all day and that was still great, people thanked him and looked at him like he really was this big superhero. For the first time, he really got to use his abilities in front of everybody, even if he had to use a fake name, but when he got back to the League and told them that Lex *wouldn't* ditch them, they looked at him like he'd said that he still thought that Santa Claus was real or something stupid like that.  
  
Maybe the fake name wasn't that stupid an idea, even if it was Bruce's. After all, he'd gotten the jitters when he came out of an apartment building they were just finishing rebuilding--since they were rebuilding it from the old foundation he wanted to be extra sure that it was safe--and when he got out, there was Dad, grinning and shaking hands and just *oozing* charm all over the place. Dad had even waved and said, really loudly, that Gotham was lucky to have that kind of protector and friend. He'd smiled right at Clark and when he heard a camera go off, if he hadn't muttered something about stuff to do, he'd have, well, done something.  
  
One of the big suits of armor had been almost completely crushed in the earthquake and to give his hands something to do, he picked it up, squishing part of it and then going to the next part, compressing it until it was just a metal ball. He tossed it up and down while he tried to think. Would it really be that stupid to go and ask Dad what was going on, if he knew what happened to Lex? If he did it in public, it should be okay, it's not like Dad would be able to do anything in public, not to Superman.   
  
"I think he's still upstairs. I'll take it on up." Oh, goodie, just what he needed, an Alfred Appearance. The guy walked like he had a marble in his butt crack and didn't want it to drop.   
  
"This came for Mr. Clark Luthor, care of Bruce Wayne." He handed Clark an envelope and just *stood* there like he didn't think Clark would really tell him to go away.  
  
"Alfred?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Go away."   
  
***  
  
*Clark Luthor.* Weird when your own name sounds like something, well, weird is going on.   
  
"Dear Clark,"  
  
*I know the handwriting. Hi, Dad. See, if I'm laughing and making remarks, then I'm not worried.*  
  
"It was an unexpected pleasure to see you in your new lifestyle. It clearly seems to agree with you. I'm not surprised in the least, as I always knew your destiny was to shape history as few men have."  
  
*Did you get a pomposity transplant or is this innate? Or do you just know how much it bugs me?*  
  
"I think you'll quickly realize--if you haven't already--that enmity between us would be absolutely counter-productive for any of our goals, shared or disparate. Instead, I hope to establish a working partnership."  
  
*Would that be Luthor and Son or Luthor and Clone?*   
  
"Upon occasion, I would like to ask you to perform certain tasks for me or obtain certain information. They will even be in accordance with your suddenly lofty principles. That quixotic streak in you which we tried so hard to repress certainly resurfaced in a time of crisis. But then, Lex's own quixotic streak has played a significant part, even a vital part, in my new plans for Gotham City. You might say that they owe their existence to him.   
  
*Get to the point, Dad, what's happening with Lex? If I keep laughing, then it's still a joke, right?*   
  
"My plans for this disaster were originally unambitious. However, your brother contacted me and told me what kinds of profits might be made in rebuilding the city--profits which were not limited to financial profits. It was a request and a particularly ill-disguised, but then, it would have been difficult to disguise."  
  
*Lex'd look really stupid in Groucho glasses.*   
  
"I offered my full and total help based upon two conditions. First, that he provide me with the information necessary to make a successful bid for majority control of Wayne Industries and that he use whatever leverage he had with Wayne to make the bid succeed. My second condition was that you both return to my custody, which would include a resumption of your earlier lifestyles, one which I suspected you both missed more than you might have guessed. I was quite proud of him when he negotiated this down to simply his own return. Since there were considerable advantages to that offer as well, I accepted."  
  
*Stupid Lex! What the hell did he do that for? Like I couldn't have taken care of, well, a lot of things, if not everything. Well, maybe it wasn't that stupid an idea, to show Dad where the big money would be, but...stupid Lex.*  
  
"Your loyalty, Clark, once given, is fierce and unconditional, even uncontrolled on your part. It became apparent that you had given this loyalty to your brother. If you are wondering whether or not I could bring myself to do Lex any harm, rest assured that I have considered the question deeply and come to my own conclusions. Since you would have no reason not to meet my occasional requests, those conclusions will, I hope, remain in a state similar to that of Schrodinger's cat, to use a whimsical illustration for a serious topic."  
  
*Look, for once, would you stop playing 101 Appropriate References? How about just saying...okay, just saying that even though, well, I know you probably wouldn't hurt him, I...I don't want to take the chance. Dammit, the way he twists it, I feel like it's my fault if anything does happen.*   
  
"Naturally, you and he may communicate as often as you like, though I shall reserve the privilege of monitoring any correspondence. To avoid any lack of clarity, please be aware that I will consider any attempts to remove him from my custody as a violation on your part of the understanding which this message creates between us."  
  
*The word for the day: Pompous. Synonym: Lionel Luthor.*   
  
"Your proud father."  
  
*Riiight.*   
  
After reading the message three times, Clark still didn't know whether to shout, so that everybody could hear it, a good, loud "I told you so!" or destroy another chair.  
  
AN:  
  
I'm curious, did the setup for the twist/misdirection work? Did you think, "Oh, now that makes sense, that's where it was really heading" or was your reaction more "That was kinda contrived?" 


	19. Chapter 19

"Esteemed progenitor by adoption,  
  
"In receipt of your missive, I am reminded of an anecdote you were once kind enough to share with me, one which vividly and memorably described the response of Caterina Sforza to the taking of her sole offspring as hostages." As much as Clark liked the thought of showing Lionel that he wasn't the only one who could be pompous, he didn't want to be *too* provoking. Also, if he was remembering the story right, Caterina Sforza had flashed the opposing army, and he couldn't quite see himself making an appearance outside the windows of LexCorp with...no, while he could imagine himself doing it, he couldn't *see* himself doing it.   
  
He folded the paper into an airplane, tossed it in an elaborate spiral, and incincerated it before it hit the ground. Recycling, he'd decided, just wasn't going to put him in a better mood and he was trying hard to keep from worrying. Lex *hadn't* betrayed them, he was probably playing pool right then, and the League would rescue him. They owed it to him, after thinking he had betrayed them. Probably Lex would even be a bit pissy about it, if he'd just had a good break when they swooped in or was in the middle of a cup of coffee or something.   
  
Maybe he'd even wait until he could talk to all of them before answering Dad's letter. But then, maybe he'd better let Dad know that he'd gotten the letter and was going to cooperate. At least until Lex was out. He tapped his pen on the table, the taste of ink still in his mouth serving as reminder that chewing on a pen when he was kind of shaken wasn't a good idea. The problem was that all his other drafts had either gone too heavily on letting Dad know that he'd play along and not been very annoying at all, or they'd been too heavy on the annoying side. The one that just read, "Dear Dad, Got it. Fine. Whatever. Hi to Lex. See you," for example.  
  
Mom had been really big on helping him write letters when he was upset with somebody. He never actually gave or sent them to people, but it did make him feel better, just like she promised. He remembered those times like they were yesterday, sprawled on his stomach in bed, writing in a notebook, while she sat next to him and rubbed his back or ran her fingers through his hair. Maybe that was it. He'd just say what he was thinking and feeling, just like she said to.  
  
"Dad,  
  
"I really don't think you'd actually hurt Lex, but you're right, I don't want to take the chance. I'll do it.  
  
"I want to hear from Lex soon, to make sure he's okay and that you're not making him be your stunt double or anything. Sometimes he can be a wuss.   
  
Clark."   
  
***  
  
AN: The story about Caterina Sforza is a real story, if not necessarily true. She was a Renaissance ruler who eventually was defeated by Cesare Borgia, but made him fight for his win. During a seige, when the opposing army threatened to kill her sons, whom they had as hostages, she climbed the city walls and lifted her skirt, shouting, "See! I have the equipment to make more sons!" Figuring that they were dealing with somebody who intended to win at all costs and that even if they did win the battle, her army would inflict heavy losses, the army lifted the seige and returned her sons unharmed. 


	20. Chapter 20

"Nobody said anything about forgetting about him!" Clark didn't quite catch it but he was still sure that Bruce Wayne rolled his eyes before he stood and leaned over the table, fists on its polished surface. "What I *said* is that it's going to take a lot of planning, that he's not in any immediate danger, and that there are a lot of people who *are,* and they've got to take precedence."   
  
Clark was too angry to put anything in words and too angry even to storm out. In response, he brought his own fist down on the table, glaring even more when he realized that he was mirroring the older man's stance. Over the sound of the wood splitting, he shouted, "We don't *know* that he's not in danger! What if Dad wants me to do something I can't? It could happen tomorrow!"   
  
Bruce heaved a sigh and sat back down, just to be annoying, Clark decided. "Clark, remember? Your father let you both go rather than let him die. I was there, I saw it. He would not hurt your brother."  
  
Clark was aghast at hearing his voice come out plaintively. "But that was life or death and all we'd done was run away, if he tells me to do something and I don't and he gets angry or if Lex tries to escape..." He looked around the room, seeing sympathy on every face but no signs of agreement, no nods, no leaning forward, people's eyes were down or looking at him, not even to the sides the way they'd be if they were trying to decide. He was using his father's techniques to try to persuade them to defeat his father, he realized, then decided he might as well go all the way. *Use self-interest first, then vanity, then fear, then emotion.* He didn't think that he could really use fear, not against the League. If they worked together, they could kick his ass. So emotion, then, and it wouldn't be difficult. Now that they weren't on his side the way he'd thought they'd be, he was, well, a bit concerned. "He's all the family I've got now."  
  
For an instant, he saw Bruce's wince and realized the tactic had missed. Wrong audience. They'd weigh his losses against Batman's and he'd lose. The worst part was that he knew he couldn't do it without them. Dad knew how to bring him down effortlessly, knew his Achilles heel. As Dad himself would have put it.  
  
He sat down again, realized he was sitting low in the chair in a very sulky position, then decided he didn't care. Wally leaned over to him and said, in a low voice, "Hey, don't worry, he's our bud, too. We'll get him out of there." Clark gave him a look and stayed exactly as he was while Black Canary updated them on the remaining needs in Gotham. Arkheim Asylum's and Blackgate Penitentary's inmates had taken advantage of the various chances to escape and it looked as though many of them were reassembling their old gangs; crime had gotten more organized, more ambitious, and there were several key signatures.   
  
As she continued, he figured that he might as well pay attention, since the sooner they had the city under control, the sooner they could get Lex out. "From the patterns, the city's been divided into three parts." *Just like Gaul. Hey! Get out of my head, Dad.* "Joker's territory seems to be the northwest, Black Mask the northeast, and Maxie Zeus the south." *Maxie Zeus. He's gotta be extra weird. Joker, okay, that's sinister, Black Mask, okay, but Maxie Zeus. Sheesh.* "We don't know if this is a formal or an informal arrangement, or how stable it is." *Good word choice, mental asylum and stable, huh.* Canary shot Clark a look and he wondered if he'd said anything out loud or if she was trying to make some kind of point about stability. He slouched lower in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, just to show her. He might have to wait, but that didn't mean he had to like it.  
***  
AN: The tone of this seems to be drifting from drama to comedy and back again. Does it work or are the switches too frequent or too jarring? 


	21. Chapter 21

Clark watched Batman smugly and hoped that if he clenched his jaw any harder, he'd break a tooth. If only he'd *known* that making "vroom" and "eeee" noises under his breath as the Batmobile accelerated and decelerated, he'd have done it all day, instead of just for the last half hour.  
  
Batman might have saved them once, but it still didn't mean that it was right that he was so willing to wait to get Lex out of danger. Clark was able to forget about it when he was doing stuff, especially if people wanted to talk and say thank you and tell him how much he was helping, but when he didn't have anything else to do and thought about it, it still rankled. "Nrooooooooom," he sub-vocalized, just as they turned a corner. He was pretty sure that now they were on the home track, Batman was *really* stepping on the gas.   
  
When they got back, he'd see how long Bats would be able to tolerate another hour or two in the Bat Cave with Clark asking, continually, "What's this? What does it do? Can I try it?" This wasn't just getting his own back--with luck, the tactic would make Bruce bump rescuing Lex to the top of his list, if only to get Clark out of his hair.  
  
"Eeeeeeeeeecrch." That was the sound of the car stopping. He thought that Batman got out of the car faster than he could even if he used his speed, and wished that he could high-five himself, but instead just hummed a bit of the Rocky theme.   
  
***  
  
Clark suddenly felt awkward about Phase 2 of his plan when he saw Alfred waiting for them. For whatever reason, annoying Batman towards a nervous breakdown seemed just, well, juvenile, at least when Alfred was around.   
  
"Alfred. Anything wrong?"   
  
"A communication from Mr. Luthor. The elder Mr. Luthor." He handed a note on thick writing paper to Clark.   
  
"Son,  
  
"I would appreciate it if you would access the Deeds Registry and find the deeds for the following properties: The Monroe Building, the blocks between Wilson and Western on the east and west and Slater and Cassell on the north and south, Benson Towers, Fleming Square, the blocks making up Foray Drive, Miller Plaza, the undeveloped lot at 15 West Kimball, and the blocks from 23rd North Grove to 25 North.   
  
"Please make sure that the system that stored the data and any recent paper records you might find are completely destroyed. I suggest incinerating the building but of course, feel free to choose the method you would find most effective and amusing. After all, you've spent so much time engaged in rebuilding, some functional destruction would be a change of pace.   
  
"Please inform me if this will take longer than two days, otherwise, bring the deeds to the Anasazi Hotel and deliver them to Cheryl Padman in Room 198.   
  
"As you might expect, discretion is a virtue of particular importance.   
  
"Your brother is quite well.  
  
"Your affectionate father,  
  
"LL"  
  
Bruce Wayne, who must have been reading along, drummed his still-gloved fingers on the table. "Those buildings and lots all changed hands recently. If I remember rightly, all from private individual to private individual."   
  
"So he's hoping to take them over?" Clark had a sense of where some of them were located and quickly estimated the value of the land. If Gotham City was rebuilt, it would be worth easily hundreds of millions, possibly more than a billion.   
  
"The backup data systems were both in buildings that collapsed entirely and were bulldozed into the harbor. The offsite backup contractor could be bribed with astonishing ease. Private land transactions weren't publically announced in the papers, it protected some very big interests that way." Clark didn't like the speculative look in Bruce Wayne's eyes one bit as he started to pull his disguise off. "If he got his hands on the original deeds, he'd have an almost perfect chance of succeeding." He walked towards one of the back rooms.   
  
"What do you mean, 'if' and where are you going?" Clark was amazed that his own voice was low and ominous, not a shout.   
  
Bruce turned back with a glare. "I'm not quite as callous as you think, Clark," he snapped. "I have copies of most of the government building plans here. Unless you think that going in without a plan is a better idea."   
  
"You don't have to be so snippy about it," Clark muttered, under his breath, as he followed. 


	22. Chapter 22

Clark had stopped counting the number of times he'd banged his head. He wasn't sure what city this was, but their pool was too short. Each time he reached one end, his body was used to two more strokes before his mind remembered that it wasn't exactly possible. Since he was trying to keep his thought processes shut off, losing himself in the rhythm and the feel of water surrounding him, his mind was almost never in time. At least it didn't hurt. Well, it didn't hurt him, and he didn't think that he'd cracked the pool yet.  
  
Still, it was easy to get tired of it, and he turned to float on his back, looking up at the dimly grey sky. Enough light, even just a bit past midnight, that he was probably in a mid-sized city somewhere. Rather than wait around Guano Central HQ, as he now called it, he'd gone for a run during a free hour, spotted the empty pool, and jumped the fence.   
  
He'd always thought that the reason he was lonely was that he never got the chance to make friends with people. His father had always kept him pretty isolated and his world population was more or less classified as family members or staff. What was stinging now was that he was finally around people, it wasn't that much better. He'd thought that this would be just perfect, not only did he not have to hide anything from them, but a lot of them had abilities like his. But that didn't really make a difference. Like Wally. It was fun to hang around with him but he didn't feel close to him. Like he could talk to Wally about things that bothered him or about how it felt to be one person when he put on his costume and another person when he was in normal clothes, even though you'd think Wally would know what that was like.   
  
He wondered if making friends was kind of like learning a foreign language. It's easy when you're young but by the time you're older, it's hard. Guano Guy didn't have any books about that kind of thing in his big library and none of the books he'd browsed in bookstores or libraries seemed to be written for him. Like they said in big invisible letters, "For human use only."   
  
He couldn't see the stars, since the sky was so overcast. Half the time he looked at them, he wondered if there were answers to all his questions there, and the rest of the time, he wondered if he'd like the answers. It's not like his own species really wanted him. Mom used to say that she thought he was a wonderful gift that they had sent. Or that God knew how much she wanted another child and sent her Clark. That had helped then, when he was just a kid, but not as much now.   
  
Thinking like this was exactly what he didn't want to do. He propelled himself to the side and got out. To dry his clothes, he shook himself for a few seconds and felt the moisture fly away from him. Maybe he'd run again for a bit.  
  
Two minutes later, he decided that his mind was getting even for all the whacking he'd given his head. He found himself standing in the middle of Smallville, in the middle of the night.   
  
It occurred to him that he really should tell the Kents that Lex was okay. Or, well, not okay but not hurt or anything like that. He should have done it earlier, probably, but it's not like he didn't have other things on his mind. It was a bit much for one person to take, the earthquakes and everything about that, seeing the city's organization fall apart like the buildings had, then everything with dad, and with Lex and the League just saying that they'd help, "later." Sure, "Luthors never feel sorry for themselves," but he wasn't a Luthor any more, not really, and he had a lot to feel sorry for himself about.  
  
Since it would be a while before anybody would be awake, he wandered around to kill time. There was something that looked a bit like a carnival grounds and he headed in that direction. Seeing something like that at night, when it was deserted, always felt a bit strange, but in an interesting way. Kind of like after he got his x-ray vision under control and could see the workings of just about anything, except this time, he didn't need to look into something, just at it.   
  
Wondering who would want to win a giant stuffed rabbit with pink fluorescent fur, he looked into the next booth and stopped when he heard something. It sounded like a scuffle and then a loud thud, followed by sounds he couldn't figure out. Running in that direction, he saw a man in a police uniform throwing dirt onto what looked like a grave, which made no sense. He looked into the ground and saw that it was a coffin, but somebody was in it and moving around, at least a bit.   
  
Before the policeman even noticed, Clark was there, grabbed the shovel, and hit him with it before he could even draw his gun. It was only a second's work to dig through the dirt and yank the coffin open.   
  
It's not like was expecting it to be anybody in particular, but if he'd guessed, it certainly wouldn't have been Chloe. She took a shuddering breath, opened her eyes, and sat up. There wasn't much light but it seemed to gather to glow in her skin and hair. Her mouth twisted and a tear snaked down her cheek. Not sure what to do or say, he reached out to brush it away, realizing only as it happened that his dirt-covered hands would leave a mark.   
  
She swallowed hard and tried to say something, then gulped and looked away. After what seemed like far too long, he thought of something to say, an awkward, "It's okay, you're safe, he won't...you're safe."   
  
He couldn't believe it as she burst into loud tears and threw her arms around him. "I'd given up, I was sure I was going to die, and then you came." Realizing that he was leaving great globs of dirt all over her, but sensing that she wouldn't care in the least, he awkwardly patted her back, while the almost strawberry scent of her hair seemed to be the best possible scent in the world.  
  
When she calmed down a bit, as much as he hated to, he asked, "Could I take you home?" She nodded, shakily. "Where do you live?" he asked, helping her up. When she didn't try to detach her hand from his, he squeezed it quickly and kept his hold.   
  
"My car's over there. I'm not sure I can drive, though. Could you, I'll give you directions. Well, you'll probably get lost, from my directions, but I can manage a 'turn at the next corner' kind of thing."   
  
As far as he was concerned, the drive was way too short. He'd have preferred getting lost, a few more moments of her pale, shining face and hair, a few more moments where he met her eyes and she smiled shakily at him.   
  
She didn't even protest when he got out, too, when they reached her house, and he walked her up to the door. "You're sure you'll be okay?"   
  
"Right back to normal." She had to be the bravest girl in the world, he decided. Sure, Diana didn't care much about danger, but then not much could hurt her. So Chloe was definitely the bravest that he'd ever come across. As she unlocked the door, she looked startled. "I didn't even say thank you!" Her nose wrinkled as she looked up at him. "Is being buried alive and then unburied, still alive, a good enough excuse?"   
  
He couldn't think of anything to say so he just smiled, which seemed to be an answer she liked. When she said, almost sounding shy, "Well, now I'll say thanks, Clark, you saved the day."  
  
"You...you remembered my name?"   
  
He could have sworn her smile was almost flirtatious. "Who could forget? Good night."   
  
Just to make sure she was okay, he watched her figure move through the house, make a short phone call, and get into bed. There was another person in there, he noticed, who seemed to stir but settled back down. Just to be sure that she was safe, though, he sat on the porch, occasionally checking inside the house, until the sun rose. Maybe he wasn't so hopeless at making friends after all. 


	23. Chapter 23

Lex looked, for at least the twentieth time, at an astounding piece of design and craftsmanship. It was slender and graceful, a beautifully shaped piece of metal. Working titanium and platinum together like that couldn't have been easy, though it made an almost unmatchable strength and lightness. No, it must have been quite a challenge to combine. Especially with the obvious addition of meteor fragments. The bracelet fixed about his wrist was as sleek and strong as a powerful car. Dammit.   
  
Doing the same thing and expecting different results is a definition of insanity, he reminded himself as he again worked the edge of a belt buckle between the bracelet and his wrist and tried to pry it off. Unfortunately, the woman who had come that morning to fit it had done far too good a job. Her hands with the tools were so sure that he hadn't even been alarmed by how closely the riveting drill bit came towards his skin, and the fit was perfect, neither distractingly loose nor uncomfortably tight.   
  
He still wasn't quite sure what to make of that whole situation. The woman, that is, not the bracelet. The bracelet's purpose was all too clear. But so far, he'd come into contact with three people after his return, that metalworker, a doctor the week before, and someone described as his "assistant," who came each day to see if there was anything he wanted. Each one of them had been a stunning, long-haired brunette, of the kind he'd always found it well nigh impossible to resist.   
  
This had to be intentional on Lionel's part. What galled him was that he couldn't decide for certain what the intention was. It could be some kind of cynical test of his self-control, which would be perfectly in character for his father, but it could also be an equally cynical way of "seeing to his comfort," and that, too, would be in character.  
  
Judging from his one experiment, they'd clearly been briefed. A few mornings ago, he'd lowered his voice to a bedroom murmur and asked Patricia, the assistant, to come over to the window where he was standing. He'd put a hand on the shoulder her blouse temptingly exposed and pointed outside with his other hand, with low-voiced inanities about the varied colors of the unvaried landscape. He slipped in the question, "What's that lake's name?" as casually as if he were asking about the weather, and caught a sardonic, "you don't fool me one bit" glint in her eye before she throatily declared ignorance with parted, glossy lips and left the room, hips swaying so much that she probably covered more side-to-side motion than forward motion in her departure.  
  
Either he was insane or the bracelet actually looked smug as the belt buckle snapped. Tossing it to the wastebasket to join the others, he decided that at least there was one thing he knew for certain that he wanted Patricia to do. Order him some new belts.  
  
****  
  
Score! There was definitely a hint of a whine in Bruce's voice.   
  
"But does he *have* to be so, so, sixteen!" Clark grinned and waited for Alfred's response.  
  
"I wouldn't know, sir. I have had relatively little experience with unusually gifted young men going through a troubled adolescence." Even though he was three rooms away, Clark instinctively stifled a snicker. There was a long pause and since apparently Bruce had no answer, Alfred went on. "Considering the circumstances and the transitions he's had to go through at a very rapid pace, he's actually handling himself reasonably well."  
  
"Agreed. But you're not the one he's pestering," Bruce muttered, and Clark heard the sound of retreating footsteps.  
  
He'd delivered the deeds to the hotel this morning and was trying to get over his sense of unease. He hadn't seen Lionel, just the woman he was supposed to give them to, and she barely said anything, just thanked him and went on reading construction contracts and sub-contracts. It made him feel too much like a puppet on a string. *Stupid Lex!*  
  
That reminded him that he still hadn't told the Kents what had happened. He checked his watch. It'd be about two in Kansas. Probably by the time he'd given them the news and all that, the high school would be letting out, so that'd be a perfect chance to make sure that Chloe Sullivan was doing okay. Which was nothing more or less than his duty as her rescuer.   
  
He ran down the steps to Guano Central HQ, stopped at the bottom, and drawing a huge breath, hollered, "Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce! I'm going out!"   
  
He snickered to himself as he heard a muttered reply.   
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
A/N: You know that lovely feeling you get when you go over to your special somebody's apartment and you see a chocolate cookbook on the counter, especially when you know that he or she actually doesn't much like chocolate but you do, and you realize that he or she bought it just to make you chocolate deliciousness?  
  
Scientific studies have confirmed that receiving feedback is definitely analogous. 


	24. Chapter 24

Clark didn't look before leaping, in this case, before leaping the fence surrounding the school. A custodian hauling out a flat of recycleables turned just in time to see him land. Clark froze for an instant, then waved as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. After a moment's hesitation, the custodian waved back, tentatively, and Clark grinned to himself.   
  
It wasn't hard to get into the school and once in, to find his way to the school newspaper offices. She'd said that she was really involved with journalism. Once there, he leafed through back issues, keeping an eye out for her return. He wanted to look more like the guy who'd rescued her than the guy who'd run off when they were on their way to coffee.   
  
A photograph of the cheerleading squad distracted him and he instinctively jumped back as a backpack sailed within inches of his nose to land on one of the chairs.   
  
"Good going, Chloe, nearly concussed the new guy." Chloe wasn't alone. And she was not alone in the sense of having another student, a male student, right next to her, and clearly on teasing terms with her.   
  
"Oh, sorry, sorry, didn't think there'd be anybody down here in the morgue and museum."  
  
"Morgue and museum?"   
  
"Morgue," she repeated, pointing at the room in general, "And museum," she finished, pointing at a wall.  
  
"You're gonna scare him off, Chloe."  
  
"No, I think it's, I think it's, uh, very interesting." He'd crossed the room--and could smell the melony lotion or bath oil or *something* that she used--to examine the wall, which was covered with clippings describing odd events. "I just came by, uh, to see how you were." When she tilted her head and smiled up at him, he decided that he really liked being tall. It wasn't a sultry look but it wasn't motherly, either.   
  
"I'm doing really well. Thanks to you." She looked up at him like that again, and took a step closer.   
  
His phone rang and he wasn't able to make himself completely forget that only the League had that number. "Sorry, just a second."   
  
"Clark?"   
  
"Yeah, hi, Alfred." He emphasized the name, trying to make sure that there was no way that she'd think it was a girlfriend calling. Or maybe that would have been a good idea, maybe she'd have been jealous? Well, he'd already broadcasted Alfred and non-girlfriendness, so it's not like he could change his mind.   
  
"There is another letter from your father."  
  
He must have looked like it hit out of the blue because Chloe and the other guy both looked at him. "What's it say?"  
  
"Do you wish me to open it?" He nearly squeaked an apology at the sudden degree of formality. He'd not quite gotten used to the fact that one or another of his father's secretaries wasn't handling all his mail, opening, sorting, and probably reporting if there were anything at all interesting. Not like there would have been.   
  
"Yes, please."   
  
"Your father requests that you, my goodness, this is unexpected, that you assist him to identify the hubs of organized criminal activities in Gotham."   
  
"Is he for them or against them?" Clark meant for it to come off as ironic and detached but a little too much of his genuine uncertainty showed through, he guessed.   
  
"He doesn't specify. He does, however, say that he requires the information tomorrow morning."   
  
"Good thing we have it, then."  
  
"Very fortunate. If you are not currently engaged in anything urgent, I suggest that you return as soon as possible, so you and Mr. Wayne can discuss what information will be sufficient."   
  
He should have known. "On my way." He looked at Chloe apologetically. "I'm sorry, I've got to run. I still owe you a coffee." He tried a smile and the tiny frown that started on her face faded.   
  
"That Kent charm is still operational," she answered, and then sat down at the computer.   
  
****  
  
Batman's voice was low and dangerous. "He played 'Got your nose.'"   
  
"With you, sir?"  
  
"Yes."   
  
"He's doing it deliberately."   
  
"One hardly plays 'Got your nose' by accident, sir."  
  
"Are you laughing?"  
  
"Only faintly."  
  
"He's doing it deliberately, Alfred, just to annoy me."   
  
"Considered from his point of view, sir, he's behaving with remarkable restraint."  
  
"'Got your nose' is not restraint.'" Batman's voice was muffled and Clark guessed that he was pulling on part of his costume.   
  
"For an inadequately socialized adolescent under a good deal of tension, it is, rather. I'll get the files to Master Clark."   
  
"Thank you." It definitely sounded like he was wearing the Bat Boy down. 


	25. Chapter 25

Just his luck. He'd finally gotten a free moment, ran to the Kents' farm, and nobody was there. Just his luck.  
  
It felt pretty good to be by himself for a bit, though. The cows didn't count, though a few of them were looking at him and he wondered if they held a grudge over his role in getting them back in the corral. Corral? Pen? Whatever you keep cows in.   
  
He'd never been around as many people in his entire life as he had in the last weeks. If he wasn't out in the city doing things, helping get water and power back, getting immediately-needed medical supplies, chasing down criminals, or generally patrolling, he was back at the Bat House, figuring out what to do next, or sometimes, eating or sleeping. He grinned reflexively as he remembered last night's dinner. *That* had gotten Bat Boy all on edge. He'd have to make sure he was around to hear when Baton told Alfred. But anyway, the sleeping was the only thing he did alone. Somehow, it was dramatic in a way to patrol alone, but when somebody, usually Wally, was with him, it felt more like being a tourist. Okay, a tourist with a weird itinerary, but still a tourist.   
  
"Here, cow!" he called, out of curiosity to see if any of them would come over to where he was leaning on the fence. "Here, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow!" Nope. Maybe he was a rain-caller instead of a cow-caller, since the wind took on that "it's going to rain soon" feeling, like it was pushing the rest of the air out of the way to make room, and sure enough, a few moments later, it was drizzling, then raining seriously.   
  
He decided that it would probably be rude to go inside their house, even though the door wasn't locked. Not that he'd catch a cold or anything, he just didn't feel like being rained on. Or did not locking the door mean that it was okay to come in? Maybe it did, but maybe it just meant that they forgot to lock up.  
  
The barn doors were wide open and he figured that a barn is different from a house. Stepping in, he looked around at all the bales of hay and various pieces of equipment. Over the last few weeks he'd gotten really good at using his heat to fix things but from looking inside them, all the equipment looked to be in perfect working condition. It was weird, they just looked as though somebody really took care of them, didn't just maintain them, let alone use them until they wore out and then get new ones. He couldn't put his finger on the difference but it was there. Maybe the way that the bits that didn't have to be clean still were clean.   
  
Now that he'd stopped to take a break, God, he felt tired. He didn't want to go back to Bat Central yet, though. Not that they'd mind if he just went to bed--the unspoken rule was that you work until you have to eat or sleep--but he didn't want to go back there. He wandered up the stairs to the loft, where there were bales of hay piled everywhere. Maybe he'd just catch a real quick nap while he waited for the Kents. He kicked off his shoes, pulled his jacket off for a pillow, and lay flat on one of the bales. It was pretty comfortable, actually. The rain on the roof sounded exactly right, there to listen to but not pounding. As he started to doze, he remembered what it reminded him of, the way that Mom would just sing to herself while she was doing things and she thought he was asleep or something. It sounded good. 


	26. Chapter 26

"Whaaa?" There was something very wrong with this bed, it felt like there was straw sticking into him.  
  
There was straw sticking into him. Well, not into him, but through his clothes. There was also a blond farmer giving his shoulder another gentle shake.  
  
"Are you all right, Clark?"   
  
"Yeah, fine, I just lay down for a few minutes-" He stopped, embarassed. He probably looked pretty stupid.   
  
"And the inevitable happened. Come on inside, Martha will want to see you."   
  
Clark rubbed his eyes again, groggily, and followed Jonathan Kent through the screen door into a kitchen. Martha Kent was seated at a table, doing some kind of paperwork, and smiled at him. "Clark, this is a surprise." The same words Dad had sometimes used, but absolutely differently. "How are you?"   
  
"Doing just fine, thanks, and you?"  
  
She looked at him as though she weren't quite convinced but answered, "We're doing well. Is that you we keep seeing in the newspapers, 'Superman?'"  
  
"Yeah, kind of, I guess."   
  
She was only partly hiding a smile but he figured that she wasn't making fun of him.   
  
"You're doing a lot of impressive things, young man." That was Jonathan Kent and Clark felt a grin break out on his face.   
  
"Uh, thanks."   
  
"There it goes. Would you like to join us for dinner?" He wasn't quite sure what to say. "We'd love to have you." Now he was sure.  
  
"Thanks. I'd really like that. I've got to call somebody first, make sure it's okay." He pulled out his phone.   
  
"The Wayne residence."  
  
"Hi, Alfred. Is Fledermaus around?" That was pretty great, that in German, "bat" was "flying mouse."   
  
"I'll call Mr. Wayne for you."   
  
"Hello, Clark."   
  
Inspiration hit. "Knock-knock."  
  
"Clark."   
  
Probably there were people who would be intimidated by that tone of voice, but not him. "Knock-knock."  
  
He could hear Bruce sigh heavily. "Who's there?"  
  
"Clark."  
  
There was a long pause. "Clark who?"  
  
"Clark who won't be around for dinner tonight. Some friends asked me to stay," he added, smugly.   
  
That was another sigh, Clark was pretty sure, but Bruce's voice was carefully level when he answered. "All right, there's nothing urgent right now, but be back by nine, we think that's when they'll be at the hospital." Area hospitals and large pharmacies were being invaded by large groups of armed thugs, holding staff and patients hostage for access to the pharmaceutical supplies. What really ticked Clark, once Bruce told him, was that they took everything, not just the street drugs, and since stocks were down after the earthquakes and shipments still weren't coming in fast enough, so the hospitals often ran dangerously low or completely out of basics, like antibiotics and blood pressure medication and things like that. People could buy them from dealers, but at outrageous prices and often adulterated. Somehow, it was really weird to look at a good business tactic--establish major control of a vital supply and reprice accordingly--and think about nothing but how to stop it.   
  
"Right, I'll be there. Be good."  
  
Another pause. "Nine o'clock."   
  
"I'll be right there and ready to give you a great big hug." It was different annoying Battering Ram over the phone, but in some ways, just as satisfying to put together his reactions just from how he sounded, he decided, shutting the phone.  
  
Mrs. Kent was looking amused again and he couldn't see Mr. Kent's face, since he was setting the table. He stood a bit awkwardly until everything was on the table and they sat down.   
  
It was spaghetti and meatballs and they smelled just as good as if they were made from lamb instead of beef and pasta out of a box instead of fresh. There was also a great big bowl of. Peas. When Mr. Kent passed it to him, he took just a few, but, misunderstanding his reasons, the older man said, "Don't worry, Clark, there's plenty." So then he had to take two more big spoonfuls.  
  
"So what have you been doing with yourself, other than being a hero?"   
  
At Mrs. Kent's question, everything started pouring out. How it felt when there were people he couldn't save and he saw them die and now that he was Superman, people expected him to have answers and solutions whether he did or not. He explained that really, he knew that Lex was right, well, mostly right, in going to Lionel, but how he hated the way Lex hadn't told him, even when it was going to affect him, too, and how again, he knew the League was right in concentrating on saving people in worse danger, but still, he wished that one or two of them would think it more important to rescue his brother and get Clark out of having to be Lionel's marionette, even if the League still decided to wait.  
  
After he'd stopped talking, he looked down at his plate. He'd probably screwed this up, too, not from displaying emotion and showing vulnerabilities, which is what Dad would have scolded him about, but by thinking that they really wanted to know. Well, they wanted to know about Lex, but probably not about him.   
  
"That's a lot to bear, Clark." A work-roughened hand settled on his wrist. Startled, he looked up, to see concern on Jonathan Kent's face, warmth on Martha Kent's, and sympathy on both. "It must feel like you're bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders. But I admire that in a man."   
  
Wow. It hadn't really been his choice, but he was proud that he had the last name "Kent," too. 


	27. Chapter 27

Chloe stopped typing and stared into space again. It wasn't that she was at a loss for words--that almost never happened--but that her brain wanted to concentrate on words that could be used to describe the guy who seemed to be zipping in and out of her life but staying very firmly in place in her thoughts.  
  
She wanted to figure that it was fate that kept dropping him into her life, but then that'd mean that fate was just as quickly whisking him someplace else again. It was like those cat teaser toys, with fate being very good at yanking him out of reach just the second she thought he was going to stay in place for a moment. "And Pete says I'm hyper sometimes," she muttered.  
  
"Pete says a lot about you, Chloe," came a cheerful voice from across the room. "Even things like you've been in outer space for the last hour." He got up and came over with a casual stride but a concerned look in his eyes. "Everything okay?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, just thinking."  
  
"Well, that's it then! Not used to it."   
  
She reached out to swat him but he dodged even before she was halfway through the movement. She felt like she was back in sixth grade again but, well, when you have to know, you have to know. No matter how pathetic asking is. She knew what her dad thought, but then that's part of the dad job description. And her mirror kept giving her different answers every day. For an inanimate object, it was pretty fickle. *Sound casual, Chloe, like you're setting up a joke. Here goes. Well, okay, now here goes. Last time, one, two, three.* "Pete, am I pretty?" She hurried on. "Say on a one to ten scale. And seriously." *Oh, that helps the casual a whole lot.*   
  
He reached for the back of her chair, spinning it so that she was looking him right in the face. "You, Chloe Sullivan, are gorgeous. And don't you forget it." As if he could tell she was embarrased, he punched her arm and went back to layouts. She could feel a silly grin on her face, as well as a blush, but then wondered if it was just her imagination or if he really looked as though she'd hit him, hard enough to hurt, before he smiled and answered. 


	28. Chapter 28

Clark checked his watch just as they finished dinner and it was almost time to meet the RoBat. "Sorry, I have to go meet them." He definitely didn't want to leave but somehow there was a lot more responsibility in not being a Luthor than there was in being one. That was just the opposite of what Dad said, but then there was a lot that Dad told him about people, at least people who weren't Luthors, that he was finding weren't true.   
  
"Take care of yourself, son."  
  
Mrs. Kent didn't say anything but she looked like she was maybe a bit worried about him so he grinned. "Invulnerable, remember?"  
  
"Nobody is, not in everything," she answered, gravely, and Clark counted down inside his head for the reference to Achilles and felt momentarily lost, like he'd wandered into the wrong conversation, when she didn't bring it up.  
  
As he got up, they got up with him and then at the door, each of them hugged him, a quick squeeze. "Come back when you can, Clark, we love having you," Mrs. Kent said as she let go of him.   
  
When he realized that she meant it, that she wasn't saying the polite things that you just say, he was almost too startled to start running.  
  
Approaching the hospital, he saw Bat But No Balls standing next to the car with somebody else. It was Catwoman, and it sure looked like they were arguing, even if they stopped when he came closer.   
  
"Hi, Sunshine," he said breezily, and to make it clear who was who, "Hi, Catwoman."   
  
"Sunshine? Is that your favorite nickname?" Catwoman did innocent very well, he decided.   
  
"No." Bathyscope turned his back on both of them and flicked some kind of remote control at the car. A screen came up, showing the hospital floor plan. "They've typically come through the back entrance, since often there are police officers in the emergency room, bringing people in. At least five of them. They try to grab the most vulnerable hostages, people with injuries...children." Clark might have thought the pause didn't mean anything, but the glance at him and emphasis on the word sure did. He was really getting to Bat Breath.   
  
They set up watch, Clark and Catwoman outside, Batteries Running Down inside. The doors and walls were all reinforced glass, so he was standing behind a pillar so as not to be seen from outside. Two jeeps came up and Catwoman nodded to Clark as a group of men got out of each, with what looked like submachine guns. They were just following them in when the inner and outer doors both shut, making them look like very angry fish in a tank. One of them raised his gun but another seemed to realize more quickly what the ricochets might do in the enclosed space. Clark muttered, "He didn't mention this part of the plan," as Catwoman looked at him like she wondered if he knew what was going on.   
  
They both turned around at the sound of sirens. About eight police cars came tearing in and the occupants rushed out. One of the trapped men seemed to decide that he might as well take the cops down with him, but got a funny look on his face and went limp, falling to the ground like the others were.  
  
Well, at least BattyCakes looked just as confused as he and Catwoman were. Another group of cars pulled up, this time filled with reporters, judging from the cameras and all that. Well, not all the cars held reporters. Clark was pretty sure that Lionel hadn't changed careers.  
  
"Well, Mr. Luthor, it looks like your invention worked," one of them said, turning to him as bulbs went off and cameras started filming the criminals being carried out by policemen wearing gas masks.   
  
"Not my invention. A partnership with the fine police forces of Gotham City. They identified the need and helped LexCorp perfect it." Clark wondered when he'd get over feeling creeped out at seeing what looked like Lex but wasn't. Lionel continued, "With a gas like this that can act in seconds but not do any lasting harm, no matter how high the dosage or how long the exposure is, I hope that we've developed a new tool for law enforcement that will help keep our citizens and our brave police officers safe."  
  
"Mr. Luthor, what was the Batman's role in this?" Big Bird, who had come into sight when things first started, was watching the scene impassively. Catwoman nudged Clark in the ribs and they both started snickering, then shaking with laughter as he continued to stand there, not having done a thing other than walk in, hide, and then come out and, well, stand. He pretty much had to stay where he was, since technicians of some kind were re-opening the doors. Even if most of Clark's laughter was just tension being released, it was still funny.   
  
Lionel smiled graciously. "Well, he wasn't part of our plans for tonight, but it's always good to have backup." 


	29. Chapter 29

Clark decided, that just for this once, he wasn't going to try and sneak up behind the Big Bad Bat and make him jump. Even if the two times he'd succeeded were pretty funny. It wasn't quite the same thing as when he was in civilian clothing. Come to think of it, he'd never said anything about the "Caution: Wide Load" sticker that Clark had put on the back of his cape.   
  
"Bruce?"   
  
He dropped his pen and turned around, looking at Clark rather suspiciously. Well, it's not like he didn't have a reason to. "Yes, Clark?"   
  
"Things are quieter now. You said that we'd rescue Lex when other people wouldn't be placed in immediate danger. The League will be here pretty soon and I'd like to bring it up on the agenda." He wanted to keep his voice absolutely neutral, not asking, not accusing, just saying, and was pretty sure he'd gotten it right.   
  
He wasn't quite sure, but it almost looked like Bruce briefly, tiredly, smiled. "Yes, that's what I said, and things are quieting down." He gestured for Clark to come look at the papers he'd been working on. Clark leaned over and leafed through them. Most of them were invoices, but the others were notices of property sales and building blueprints. "I've got enough now that we can start eliminating possibilities."   
  
It took a moment, but then Clark saw. "I get it."  
  
"It's a good thing your brother has expensive tastes." This time Clark was sure. It was a smile. "I *think*, that since it was fairly difficult to get our hands on these, that we can assume that they're authentic."   
  
"Wait a minute. How long have you been getting this together?"   
  
"A few days."   
  
"You never said anything! Hello, don't you think that would have been a good thing to do?" He couldn't believe it and had to clench his fists to keep from grabbing Bruce and shaking him. It was so cold of Bruce to just let him worry and wonder if maybe the League wasn't ever going to get off its ass instead of saying, "Oh, by the way, I've started figuring out where your brother is."  
  
"I wanted to make sure that this was leading somewhere before I said anything. I didn't want to play your emotions by saying there was something if there wasn't."   
  
"Still. You should have."   
  
"Perhaps. But here's what we've got so far. I went with the assumption that he'd still be in the country, or at least North America, and that your father would want him on property he owned, not something rented." Clark nodded, grudgingly. "It also made sense that he'd want Lex someplace with a medium-sized staff. Too small, and they might not be able to handle emergencies, too big, and the chances that somebody would be bribable go higher."   
  
"Yeah."   
  
"So I got descriptions of every Luthor-owned property that was in the public record. If that doesn't work, of course, we'll look for others, but it's the fastest start."   
  
"Okay."   
  
"For right now, we can set aside the bigger and smaller ones, but I'd like you to go through them anyway. If there was a place where he particularly felt at home, he might have requested that."  
  
"I'm...I'm not exactly sure that I'd know."  
  
"Hmmm?"   
  
"We didn't get along too well for a pretty long time. He was at boarding school and I was home-schooled, and after Lex got out of college, he kept us apart a lot. I think having us live in the same house in Smallville was his way of testing things."   
  
Bruce just nodded, which was just as well. "So here are the places that on the surface of things, look likely. Then I looked for any types of deliveries that might indicate where he was."  
  
"And?"   
  
"Nothing with flashing arrows yet. It looks like he had Lex's own possessions sent from Smallville to Metropolis, which makes sense for stage-setting. It's harder to track if he had any of them sent anywhere else after that, but I'm hoping to get a contact from Architectural Digest to get him to agree to a profile and have a photographer get in. If Lex's things aren't there, that'd be a good lead."   
  
"Then what? Narrow it down to the most likely and do some kind of surveillance around them?"  
  
"Exactly. That's going to be the most difficult part, making sure that we can do it unobserved. I don't think that your father would harm Lex unless he felt pushed to the wall, but the real risk is that he might move him someplace else or put him under heavy guard."   
  
"Yeah. I guess it makes sense."   
  
"Good." He put the cap back on his pen. "I want you and Alfred to look through all this tonight. In the meantime, the League is meeting in a few minutes, and there's a lot of League work that has to be done."  
  
"I *get* it, I *get* it." Clark turned to go.   
  
"Oh, and Clark?"   
  
"Hmm?" He looked back.  
  
"You *really* got on my nerves. Good work." Clark stared at the older man's poker-face and after a moment, grinned.  
  
"I thought so!" Feeling much easier in his mind than he had the past few weeks, he zipped out of the room.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
  
  
AN: Most of my closest friends in middle school and high school were boys. So coming up with adolescent nicknames is still second-nature! 


	30. Chapter 30

Clark took another deep breath and dove again, heading towards a feebly struggling figure. *Hang on there, don't die on me,* he silently urged as he seized whoever it was by the shoulders and kicked to return to the surface. He'd been in time, he saw as he rubbed his eyes clear of the mud, and the person was still alive and breathing normally. He looked to see if there was anybody else caught alive under the mudslide but the remaining air pockets had collapsed.  
  
"Nobody," he said, shaking his head, before remembering that he was in remote Brazil and none of the people there spoke English. The other survivors seemed to understand, though, judging from the way that their expressions changed from timid hopefulness to resignation.   
  
The woman who seemed to be in charge looked at him anxiously, then crouched on the ground, smoothing a section of the mud with her hand, and began to draw and sculpt, occasionally plucking at a piece of greenery and incorporating it. He sat next to her, frowning as he tried to interpret it. Finally, he thought he got it and tried to repeat it back, using the same methods and talking out loud as he did so. "So these big trees with a lot of roots, far off that way, are dying, and there's nothing holding the soil, so when it rains, it all comes as a flood?" He had picked up the same type of big leaf she had, shaking it back and forth to indicate that it was sick, and then dropped it to indicate its death. She picked it back up and instead made a slashing motion towards the stem, then shredded it to pieces. "No, not dying, being cut down." He imitated the gesture of sawing through a tree and she nodded. "Oh." There wasn't much else he could think of to say, not even when he left. Maybe it was just as well that he didn't speak the language.   
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
There wasn't anything urgent for Clark to do and he didn't feel like going back to Gotham City yet. He didn't really want to be with people but he didn't want to be quite alone, either. As he soared over a series of fields, he wondered what the Kents were doing.   
  
Another good thing about flying at super-speeds meant that pretty much anyplace could be "on the way," and he figured out which way Kansas was, and from there, Smallville. Once there, he circled the Kent's farm, locating Mr. Kent, and landed next to him as he finished filling a water trough.   
  
"Hi, Mr. Kent." From the momentary pause, he realized that Mr. Kent probably didn't recognize him under all the mud, even though it had at least caked dry during his flight. "Sorry, it's Clark. I was in a mud slide."   
  
"I guessed something like that," he answered, looking Clark up and down with a welcoming smile.   
  
"I was just passing by, thought I'd say hello, see how you were doing."  
  
"We're just fine." He raised his eyebrows and the hose. "I think it'd take a bit more than a shower to get that off, so if you'd like to, I'll do the honors. It'll be cold, though."  
  
"It's hot out," Clark grinned, a grin which widened as the jet of cold water worked its way down and around him. When Mr. Kent had finished, Clark retreated several feet and shook himself, then shoved his still-moist hair out of his eyes. "That felt great. Thanks."  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
  
  
"I was using old building security tapes as tests, you see. It'd be a good mix of recurrent and irregular patterns. Staff, visitors, so on, and it would be easy to test the system for false positives that way." Lionel nodded and the project lead engineer continued. "It worked pretty well, we were able to fine-tune the facial recognition algorithms to less than 2 percent false positives rate for close-ups but for distance, it was still about 50 percent failure. So then I added motion patterns analysis. How people walk, hand gestures, eye contact patterns, so on."  
  
"That makes sense," he said, since she was waiting for some comment or another. The real-time video individual recognition system was an important DoD contract but it looked like it had gotten even more important before it was even rolled out.   
  
"That brought it down to about 30 percent but it was still too many false positives. I needed more videos for it to process. Its corrections rate is about .01 percent per hundred thousand images. So I got the regional sites to send me copies of all their security tapes. It took the system about 3 weeks to process them and by the time they were done, the false positives were down to about 6 percent. It was these four people who showed up consistently at three of the ten buildings." She tapped on the composite photographs she'd put on the table.   
  
He gave them a quick enough glance to confirm his suspicion and got up. "Six is still too high. I'm putting your budget on unrestricted status. I want you to get videos from every possible source and pay special attention to unsteady images, diverse crowds, obscured faces. Start with the videos from Gotham City in our news library. That will be the best test. From there, go to old newsreels and videos of theater productions with stylized makeup. Let me know again when the error rate is less than one percent."   
  
She looked ready to ask more questions but he turned away slightly and she left.  
  
It didn't have to be Clark's new allies, he reminded himself. It could be simple corporate espionage. It could even still be programming glitches, computer error. A system doing that kind of real-time complex processing--analyzing faces and motions just from videos, defining individuals, assigning their characteristics to a database, and recognizing them again--was bound to have a high failure rate.   
  
He reminded himself of an episode from World War Two. In 1944, several of the code words for the planned Allied invasion appeared in the London Daily Telegraph's crossword puzzles. It seemed as though it couldn't be a coincidence, not with such words as overlord, Utah, Omaha, mulberry, and Neptune, all major Allied code words and ones not regularly occurring in daily British usage, appearing in the crosswords just weeks before the planned D-Day. But the most rigorous investigations, combined with the clearly uncompromised and successful invasion, ruled out anything but bizarre coincidence.   
  
It would, he hoped, turn out to be the case here as well. 


	31. Chapter 31

"You're looking quite well, Lex." Lex started at the unexpected voice and the movement briefly submerged him. Sputtering the water out of his mouth, he assumed a vertical float as Lionel added, "I didn't mean to startle you," in a tone that was as close as he got to apology.  
  
Lex dogpaddled back to the side of the pool and hauled himself out, and Lionel reached for the nearby pile of towels and tossed him one. "Dad. This is a surprise." Except by now, it wasn't really. Any family's dynamics would change after a fugitive son became the father's hostage to ensure the co-operation of an adopted alien. But trust the Luthor family to make the change one for the better. Duels that had been intended to wound, and wound to leave scars, were now just practice bouts and what was more, Lex was deeply suspicious that Lionel's visits were motivated by pleasure as much as by his wish to confirm that things were still exactly as he wished them to be. He was equally suspicious of himself--he was beginning to believe that he was enjoying them as well. "Gotham City running without you?" he asked lightly as he dried himself.   
  
"Remarkably so, yes."  
  
Once he was out of the water, Lex loathed the smell of chlorine and so walked to the small elevator at the end of the room, Lionel following. They'd even settled into a routine: At each visit, Lionel brought two bottles of some unfamiliar brandy or scotch, or occasionally of wine, and they'd spend as much as an hour engaged in leisurely sipping and comparisons. Some of them had been spectacular, but with one memorable bottle of scotch, after a dinner that didn't even get the taste out of their mouths, Lionel paused at the threshold and pointing at the superior bottle, told Lex not to drink the rest at one sitting, and then at the offending bottle, told him by all means to pour it down the sink in one go. Not that Lex was totally obedient: Instead, he poured it down the toilet.  
  
"Breakthroughs in the landing gear?" he asked as he pulled his clothing back on.  
  
"None at all." Lex had earlier asked, in genuine curiousity, if Lionel had found any way to replicate Clark's flight speed in aircraft, since Clark had mentioned in one of his letters that he'd spent an afternoon flying while they took photographs and made videos of all descriptions, from thermal to stop-motion to lighting out of the human visible spectrum. To his surprise, Lionel answered in detail, summarizing that they'd found ways to create a considerably lighter alloy for the plane's structure and engine. However, it hadn't reduced the weight enough and such an aircraft would need a landing strip almost six miles long to reduce velocity sufficiently without stripping the entire bottom off or air pressure crumbling the front half. Similarly, there was no way to reduce velocity enough while the plane was still in the air.  
  
"How about a series of sacrificial wheels? Start at the rear, let the first set of wheels burn out for shatter, then the second one comes down, and so on." He'd at first felt guilty about thinking of possible solutions, but then told himself that it wasn't as though this was part of the agonizingly extracted information from that first examination. Besides, it was a fascinating problem.   
  
"We ran that in one of the simulations. It just created its own set of problems." Lionel looked at Lex with the air of a professor who had posed a question to a bright student.   
  
"Let me guess, to accommodate enough wheels, the plane would have to be impracticably long."  
  
"Exactly."   
  
"Two more ideas. One, a series of geared wheels, like clockwork. They might last long enough, if they've got a large diameter, since there is a loss of momentum on the ground." Lionel nodded, thoughtfully. "Or forget about making the change in the plane and use something along the lines of magnets with opposite poles to hold the plane up while shutting the engines off still in the air, and they'd keep it up while it slowed enough to land."   
  
"Wouldn't that still take miles, though, just of magnets?"  
  
"I'm not sure." Lex walked to the desk and picked up pen and paper. "If there were also another magnet, a strong one, running vertically on tracks in *front* of the plane, the repulsion might be enough to slow it down." Lionel pondered the sketch for a moment.   
  
"What about the two attracting poles with the one on the ground and this one, wouldn't it be almost impossible to keep magnets that strong from attracting each other?"  
  
"Mmm." *What would keep the two of them apart?* Another idea hit. "Make it arched. The bottom part of the arch would be nonmagnetic, tall enough that the part on top wouldn't affect the ground magnets. Then the plane would go *under* it, not behind it. It'd still provide resistance."   
  
"I think you might have something there, Lex. Good thinking."   
  
They continued with the details until an apologetic voice asked if they still wished for dinner at 8:00 or if the cook should delay it. Lionel chuckled, looking at his watch, and after receiving a confirming shake of the head from Lex, declined, adding to Lex that they could always continue through dinner.   
  
***  
  
"Clark?" Clark looked up from the paper at Bruce Wayne's level voice.  
  
"You do realize that we're working strenuously to find your brother and figure out how to get him out, right?"   
  
Clark nodded, brows wrinkling in confusion. Why was he talking like somebody laying down a court argument?  
  
"And therefore, you've given up your campaign to drive me out of my mind, right?"  
  
He nodded again, wondering where this was going.  
  
His host's calm cracked. "Then for God's sake, stop that!"   
  
"Stop...oh." He grinned, completely without repentance, as he realized what he'd been doing. "Sorry." He'd only recently discovered that if he pursed his lips just right, he could blow air so quickly that it would freeze whatever it hit. He'd started playing with it, first bringing his coffee almost to boiling, then freezing it, and repeating the sequence. Looked like it generated enough heat and cold that somebody eating breakfast at the same table could feel it.  
  
He decided to play with this new ability later, since now he and Bruce were mostly on good terms again. Nonetheless, he wished that he'd discovered it while he was still in his campaign. There'd have been lots of ways to use it, particularly if he could find a way to do so while Bruce was showering. Not enough to scald or frostbite him, just enough to make his point.   
  
The first time he and Bruce met and they talked through that night, Bruce introducing possibilities and concepts that hadn't ever occured to a boy raised almost solely by Lionel Luthor, in a moment of uneasy self-examination, Clark had asked, flippantly, if this was all just a long and wordy way to say "use your powers for good, not evil."  
  
Bruce had chuckled faintly and shook his head. "If only good and evil were concepts that easy." They'd gone on, but Clark was willing to bet that if Batman could turn time back, he'd have tried to get a vow from Clark never to use them for evil or for pestering. In a way it was kind of a shame he felt obligated now not to annoy Bruce any more. After all, Mom had always told him to exercise his imagination as much as his mind and his body. 


	32. Chapter 32

Clark clutched at his chest as the weapon hit it, gasped for breath, groaned a few times, and burst out laughing. "Come on," he chided the nervous drug dealer, who had taken a tentative step towards escape, "You really think that once you were out of bullets, like throwing the gun at me was going to do anything? Get real." The dealer seemed slightly relieved when the police arrived, mid-lecture.  
  
He was watching the time, though, since he'd talked Bruce and Diana into letting him follow them that night when they rescued Lex from the secluded house in the woods upstate. If only Gotham City had the various business clocks or the big clock tower up and running, he wouldn't have had to wear a wristwatch, which even he, with his far less fussy dress sense, knew was spoiling his whole superhero look. But, unlike some, no, make that all, Luthors he knew, he wasn't going to let that get to him.  
  
The League hadn't let him get really involved in finding the house and making sure that Lex was held there, getting into various architects' offices and copying the blueprints, and making all the bribes they needed for the rest. That he could deal with, since he figured that their father would have everybody on watch for him specifically and probably have everything laced with lead and meteorites. But when it came to the actual rescue, when they'd decided that two people would be best and that Bruce and Diana would be the best team, since he had all his bat toys and her lasso could make people tell the truth, just in case Lex was hidden some place inside that they couldn't find themselves, he'd insisted that he keep the rear guard. After one meaningful exchange of stares, which Clark had ended with his "I can break your resistance again" smirk, Bruce had agreed.  
  
He circled the city to kill time. He had to admit that Lionel was really getting everything rebuilt and things were a lot closer to being orderly than he'd imagined they would be at this time. Sometimes he was uneasy about just what Lionel wanted to accomplish with all this, other times he figured that it was all about Lionel's drive for vicarious immortality. Weird, when you thought about it, that Lionel had established all kinds of things with the Luthor name all over them, the corporation, the stadium, the foundation, the opera house, all that, and now he probably had a decent chance of being immortal, what with being able to rejuvenate himself, but the history books wouldn't recognize, probably, that he was the first human to really be immortal. Weird.   
  
What hit Clark as even weirder was that his father had actually been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for rebuilding Gotham City. Had they ever seen Lionel in the middle of a burst of fury?   
  
He checked his wristwatch again and flew back to Bat Central HQ. He didn't want to be late for this, though certainly he could catch up to them on the road if he had to. He just didn't want them to tell Lex that he was late, because then he'd never hear the end of it.   
  
With any luck, Bruce and Diana would burst in while Lex was eating, and there'd be a big food-splat. Then he'd get to make sure that Lex never heard the end of it.  
  
***  
  
The problem with waiting in the Batmobile was that there wasn't a radio, Clark decided. The ride up had been okay, but once they'd gotten to a certain distance, they'd parked and Clark had to wait. He'd already played with as many of the controls as Bruce hadn't specifically disabled, based on earlier experiences with Clark and the car.  
  
The time wasn't so much dragging as freezing. He'd actually been disappointed when the sun set, because that meant he couldn't pass the time in another thrilling round of "count the squirrels." What, had Lex said that he wasn't leaving without changing his clothes and brushing his teeth?  
  
One of the things that had told them that they'd found the right place was the way that there was so much lead in the glass and walls, and so he couldn't even try to fly up and see if he could see if anything was happening from a distance.   
  
Bruce and Diana hadn't forgotten where they were parked, had they? Maybe he'd better just stroll a bit closer, not close enough to be detected, of course, and see if he could tell what was going on. 


	33. Chapter 33

Clark stopped, just out of sight of the building. It was frustrating not being able to look inside, a bit like missing part of a sense or something. But definitely no sign of anybody coming out. It was starting to get creepy.  
  
If Dad was a step ahead of them, it'd mean that Diana and Bruce would be in big trouble, as well as Lex. He didn't think that Dad would hurt Lex, but Diana and Bruce would be another story, not being flesh and blood. He ran right up to the edge of the building and tried to listen inside. He guessed that if Dad had caught them, even if it were the moment that they first got inside, the older Luthor would still be talking.   
  
As he concentrated, he could hear voices, but they faded in and out and he couldn't make out words. He tried the door and it was open. More of the weird.   
  
Just the word reminded him of Chloe Sullivan. She liked weird. He wasn't sure, though, that she'd really like to know that he himself was pretty much weird epicenter. Or if she did know, what she'd do about it, think about it. There was a chance she'd want to pin him against the wall and get up close and personal with weird, but maybe she'd just want to pin him on the wall. Could maybe the Kents kind of find out for him?   
  
A few more feet inside, and he heard one phrase, way too clearly. "We can't let Clark see this." That was Bruce. He tore in the direction of the sound, sometimes stumbling past the green glows that started as he approached, like they were glad he was here so they could eat him alive.  
  
He stopped in a doorway. It was just Bruce and Diana there, in a bedroom, empty of anything but furniture. Bruce was staring at the bed, swearing in such a monotone that it almost sounded detached. Clark didn't get it at first, then saw that the colors of the crumpled sheet weren't some kind of abstract arty thing. Straightened out, it would be the shape of a human figure, surrounded by rust-brown stains. On an equally stained piece of paper lying in the exact center on the bureau nearby, there was a neatly coiled strap.  
  
***  
  
Lex opened his eyes, stretched, and looked around as a strong deja vu presented itself. Bottle of water at hand, nicely chilled, spectacularly comfortable bed linens, and so on. Grabbing the water and gulping some down, he strolled to the window and looked out, twisting his neck to see up and down. If the other setting was rustic, this was downright isolated, with nothing in sight but trees, a mix of coniferous and deciduous, and rock faces. He surmised that the house was built into the side of a mountain, fairly high up.   
  
He tried the window crank and after some effort and an unexpected soreness in his arm, it opened about an inch. Lex frowned down at the crook of his arm and saw not just the tiny injection mark he'd anticipated, but another one, surrounded by a bruise. If they'd dosed him twice, that meant he could be anywhere, probably even another continent. Next time Lionel dropped in, he'd see what he could find out. But in the meantime, a shower and a workout would be just the thing.  
  
***  
  
Clark had no idea where he'd stopped running. Not that it mattered.   
  
Everything was so screwed up. He hated his father for being so vicious, he hated the League for not being more careful, and he hated himself for not seeing it coming. He'd never been able to outwit Lionel before, Lionel knew him too well, hell, Lionel had been the one who shaped him. There was no way that he'd ever be able to beat him.  
  
God, was that the wrong word. He wished so much that he didn't hear all the voices from his memories telling him that he had to think about the consequences to his actions. Mom's, gentle and concerned, Bruce's, steady and serious, Dad's, even, calm and smug. Sure, he could blame the League all he wanted, and that was plenty, but he could bet anything that Lex would blame him.   
  
A train horn from the distance sounded just like he felt. Now he didn't have anybody left. He hated them or they'd hate him. It just wasn't fair.  
  
***  
  
Lionel folded his own note, reread Lex's to be positive that there wasn't anything untoward, and put them in the envelope. It was an awkward situation but he had handled it with aplomb, he congratulated himself. After years of making sure that his two children would not form a close bond that might lead to an alliance against him, he'd seen them form just such a bond, but adapted quickly to make sure that now that closeness would keep them both firmly under control.  
  
A week had been the right time to wait after Clark had seen those stage trappings. Nobody in Gotham or Metropolis had seen Superman--he still wasn't able to think of Clark by that name without wanting to roll his eyes--during that wait, and nothing unusual had happened to his commercial or personal holdings. Ergo, Clark was cowed. Now was the time to notify him that he'd been tricked, making it clear that should Clark try to circumvent his plans again, the same scenario would be played out in reality. 


	34. Chapter 34

Clark looked up, startled by the sound of footsteps at his bedroom door. Catwoman was leaning in the doorway, licking her lips.

"I've been thinking, Clark...and talking things over..." Diana came to join her, standing behind Catwoman, wearing a black silk something. Clark wasn't sure what it was but he knew that he liked it.

"Since you're man for more than just one woman..."

Chloe Sullivan joined them, "And we're so fond of one another anyway." While she and Catwoman twined around one another, Diana continued, "We need you to-"

"Wake up, Clark." Chloe's voice just wasn't that deep. More reluctantly than he could recall doing anything, ever, Clark opened his eyes and saw Bruce Wayne's arm across his line of vision as the older man shook his shoulder again.

"Guh?"

"Things are going to pieces all over the city, Clark. Gangs are attacking not just the commercial districts but apartment buildings." Bruce had turned to leave the moment Clark was awake and as Clark followed him down to the cave, he added sentence fragments as crisply as if he were chopping them off with one stroke of a cleaver. "The rich buildings. Breaking in, grabbing valuables, shooting anybody who resists. Or looks like they might. At least twenty casualties so far." He turned to the computer. "Print map. These are the latest hotpoints and the ones where I think they're headed next, in green. I'll take the north side of town."

Clark was exhausted by the time he got back to the Manor. He remembered Lionel's stories about the Labors of Hercules and how one of the tasks was to kill the Hydra, a monster that grew two new heads each time the hero chopped one off. He'd been able to catch some of the criminals but at each scene, there were people who needed help. Unlike Hercules', Clark had to fight against fire, not with it, since the gangs had realized that throwing Molotov cocktails or other fire-starters occupied him while they made their getaway. Or if they shot to disable, instead of kill, it meant he had to take people to the hospital.

He wasn't tired from the inside out but from the outside in, as though the blood stains on his uniform were each draining a little bit of his energy. He passed the living room on his way to shower and paused as he heard a voice.

The television was on and he caught Georgia Lawnley, Gotham's most popular news commentator, closing, "Certainly Mr. Luthor's authority does not extend to running the police and emergency systems. However, since he has been so integral in rebuilding them, and has all but promised law and order in Gotham City, through promoting so many security contracts with LuthorCorp and assuring our citizens of their effectiveness, he has many questions to answer."

Lionel found it satisfying actually to need to throw items around in a tantrum, the way that Lex would have. He cut off the station manager's almost-tearful apologies. "I don't care how sorry you are, I care how that 'revised editorial' got past you."

"I assure you, Mr. Luthor, I did not authorize-"

"I know you didn't authorize it." You wouldn't have dared to. "But somebody wrote it and told her to read it." He cut across again. "I know that I have veto authority over all the editorials and that I had passed tonight's. Somebody intercepted it and I want to know who." He disconnected and considered his options.

AU: Well, that blasted Muse finally woke up and started poking at me again!


	35. Chapter 35

Flying over the city had its advantages. Clark wondered if when Batman was scaling one wall or another, he ever had any embarrassing oops moments when the building's inhabitants were doing it like extra-horny rabbits. X-ray vision made that a real problem at times.

Flying also meant that he could see that Batman was standing on the roof of one building, brooding, and Catwoman was crouched on the roof three buildings over, looking like she was brooding, too. He wondered if he should maybe tell her that Batman was there, or vice-versa, but it wasn't like he was exactly qualified for Dear Abby.

He'd been reading Bruce's files on various perps, like the Joker, and even **he** had a girlfriend. A nutjob of a girlfriend, but it's not like the Joker would really want a normal one. Sometimes it made Clark want to stand on the roof of a building and brood, too. Except Batman looked like he fit among all the gargoyles and such, and Catwoman looked hot no matter what, but unless he dressed in black, too, he'd stand out like a sore thumb. Probably somebody would come up and ask him to autograph something, which happened a lot these days. He really liked that when he was in the mood, but not when he was thinking about the gaping void in his life labeled "Girlfriend--or lack thereof." In his case, "especially lack thereof."

Crime had slowed down a lot after those first two nights. Dad had been really pissed about that and about the editorial on television. It had made him look as though he wasn't in control any longer. People were asking questions about whether it really made that much financial sense for the city to privatize so many of the criminal system functions to LuthorCorp. That, plus the people arguing that putting prisons and public safety in private hands was giving the system incentives to act against the best interests of the public, could put a lot of his Civil Revitalization Initiative back under questioning. It wouldn't put it at risk, Dad was too good at maneuvering for that, but it was a nuisance for him.

Which meant that Clark was flying around on patrol in case anything happened. He'd stopped the usual levels of muggings, burglary, and petty arson, but nothing that seemed as unleashed as those nights. He'd also stopped some domestic violence, or at least he hoped he had. That was really depressing.

Maybe he could get in a quick visit to the Kents. Talking things over with Mr. Kent actually helped. Well, a lot of the time it helped. Talking with Lex or Batman kept everything complicated. Lex was always so oblique, even just in letters, and Batman, well, he couldn't make two plus two simple. But when he talked with Mr. Kent, it was like solid ground. Maybe it was being a farmer. Cows were definitely complicated inside, especially with all the stomachs, but dealing with them was straightforward. They hadn't even looked very surprised the time he'd buzzed them.

* * *

A few minutes later he was knocking at the Kent's door. Mrs. Kent was mixing something and called to him to come in, then hugged him when she saw who it was. He really liked that, and even more when she sat him down at the table and gave him a cup of coffee in a mug, like he was family, and remembered that he liked almost a third milk. She could even tell that he didn't want to talk about Gotham City. Or at least not yet.

"How's the writing going? We saw some of your stories in the Daily Planet. You really have a gift for description."

"I'm still figuring out how to interview people. It's hard to know what to ask. You want them to tell their stories themselves but it comes out messy."

"Isn't a good editor supposed to help with that?"

"Yeah, but when you freelance, you can't always count on it."

"You know, Chloe Sullivan edits the school paper and I bet she'd love to help you with it."

"Would she really?" Wow, Chloe editing his writing. They'd have to spend a lot of time together then. Or at least a lot of time sending email to one another. She might get to wondering how he was writing from Gotham City and visiting Smallville every few days. Lionel had given him a lot of money, so he could pretend that he just flew in each week, that he was on a trust fund as long as he worked. That way, she wouldn't think he was some kind of guy version of Paris Hilton. Who was definitely hot, but he didn't think that Chloe would think much of her.

"Why don't you call her? I think I have her number here, or they're in the book."

"That'd be great. Thanks!"

Jonathan Kent came in, went over to Martha and kissed her on the cheek, then looked at Clark as though there was something funny happening soon but Clark wouldn't see it for a few minutes. "Clark, could you help me get some of the feed into the barn?"

Clark got up and was definitely suspicious when Martha followed them out. It wasn't anything to do with the truck, since he just grabbed a bag of feed and nodded for Clark to take the others. He followed Jonathan into the barn and dropped the bags in the corner where Jonathan dropped his.

"Go up to the loft, Clark, there's something we want you to take a look at."

The loft had been full of hay bales before, but now it was all clear, with a sofa and a desk and a short bookcase. "Uh, you decorated it." There must be something big he was missing.

"Do you like it?" Martha Kent was standing on the steps with her arm around her husband's waist. "We thought you needed some place to get away."

"It's for me?"

"You sounded pretty burned out. Someplace that would be yours and where you could be alone when you needed to."

"That's...wow, thanks." He looked around at it again. "I didn't even know it's what I needed."


	36. Chapter 36

"You are so going to freak!" Clark wasn't quite sure that this was good, since Wally looked just a bit too excited. "You will absolutely freak."

"What's happening?" If Batman had gone in and somehow gotten Lex out by himself, he'd kill him. But gratefully.

"There's a new member in the League." Okay, not Lex. Batman could go on living. "Guess where he's from."

"My home planet?" That'd mean answers. Finally, answers.

"Well, close. Not in a geographical way, because it's about as many million miles away, but you're on the right track."

Maybe he'd kill Wally, instead. "So it's another planet, right, but not where I'm from."

"Yeah, buddy, you aren't the only alien on the planet." Oh. Well. Oh. That was good. He guessed it was good.

"So what planet's he from, anyway?"

"Mars. That is so cool!"

Mars. Practically neighbors, then. Not nearly as exciting as being from out of the solar system, which was what Batman and Lex had figured out about him. Lionel had probably figured it out, too, but never told him. "Yeah. Mars. That's cool."

They'd slowed down to talk and Wally was grinning his head off as he opened the door. There was actually a green guy sitting in one of the chairs, talking to Bruce. "There were three of our kind, you see, whites, reds, and greens."

Bruce looked up. "There you are, Clark. J'onn, I'd like you to meet Clark Kent. Clark, this is J'onn Jonz. He's originally from Mars."

"Hi." The guy was tall, green, and bald. Lex would probably think that was cool.

"Hello, Clark, it's a pleasure to meet you. Bruce told me quite a bit about you." Uh oh. That might not be all good, since Bats definitely knew all about grudges, and Clark hadn't really apologized for a lot of his better inspirations. But then J'onn was smiling, which Clark took as a friendly expression.

"Uh, great. Wally told me that you're from Mars and that you've joined the League?"

"Batman and Wonder Women have kindly invited me, yes. I'm very much looking forward to learning more about you and working with you, especially since we seem to have some rather similar abilities."

When it came to abilities, Clark was on his home ground. "Yeah. I'm fast, almost as fast as Wally, and I'm strong. We've never gotten to testing exactly how strong, because at about eight tons, there's a limit to things to pick up, you know?" That'd impress him.

"Very interesting. I'm probably not as fast as you, but since I can shape-shift, I'm able to be quite strong as well." Shapeshift. Wow, that'd be so cool. First thing he'd do would- "I'm also telepathic and can read minds and link them. I can also locate people through a psychic link. Bruce and I were discussing how that might be of use to the League." That definitely sounded useful. J'onn opened his mouth again. Sheesh, how many abilities did the guy have? "I can also use my eyes as a kind of laser."

"I've got something like that. Watch this!" Clark turned to the fireplace, which Alfred must have laid recently, and ignited it with a quick, hot burst. He turned back triumphantly to see J'onn's reaction.

The Martian was writhing on the floor, screaming. Bruce shouted, "Put it out, now!" This was making no sense at all, but Clark blew the fire out.

"What's going on with him?"

Bruce looked at him levelly. "His one weakness, Clark, is fire. He's pathologically afraid of it."

Nobody ever told him anything, or at least not in time.

AN: Yes, yes, it totally screws up canon chronology, but I'm having fun. I wanted them to meet when Clark would still be a bit immature about it but not so early that J'onn could help rebuild Gotham.


	37. Chapter 37

"Missed!"

"Clark, aim for the _center_ of the board." Chloe gave him an odd look and Clark tried to look more disappointed in his bad throw at the dartboard. It took a lot of effort to lose convincingly, Clark was finding. Lionel had never permitted him to lose; that had been one of his many arguments against letting Clark attend school or socialize with outsiders, that it would mean Clark would have to make himself lose. So that meant that he was concentrating on looking like he was concentrating on playing, instead of concentrating on playing badly, or, better yet, concentrating on Chloe.

He decided to change strategies. "Come on, Chloe, you're distracting me."

"So that's your excuse?"

He took a step closer. "What if it's not an excuse?"

She first looked up at him through her lashes, then tilted her head back. She really truly was acting like she wanted to kiss him. He bent his head, slowly, savoring each second of anticipation, and then the screaming started.

"Get away, get AWAY!" It was a man's voice shouting that; the woman's voice just screamed. Clark knew screams by now and this was the real thing. He also knew that it was his superhearing and that Chloe wasn't hearing a single thing.

"Uh, gotta-" He ran down the loft steps and the moment he was out of the barn, took off in the direction of the screaming.

He didn't recognize the young black man who was trying to beat off a huge Rottweiler or the young woman who had a nasty bite on her arm. The dog snapped through the stick effortlessly and the man thrust the piece at its face.

Clark needed only that instant to take in the scene and grabbed the dog, continuing to run as he did so. He remembered where the police station was and ran there, past the front desk, and found an open cell. He thumped the dog on the head, dropped it in, and ran out again and back to the loft.

Chloe didn't look at all happy with him. "What were you-"

He could only think of one excuse. "I think it was, uh, something I, uh, ate. I kind of had to..." Yeah, that would bring back the kissing atmosphere real quick, he groaned to himself.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"I'll be fine." _In a year or two. _

Chloe left soon after, telling him to go home and get some rest, and he decided to return to Gotham City, hoping that some patrolling would distract him from worse than terminal embarrassment, the kind of embarrassment that wouldn't kill you.

* * *

Lionel was not pleased with the situation. His plan of privatising as much as he could of the city's police forces was supposed to make things much easier for him, but instead, the unexpected jumps in the crime level were making things much more difficult. He had actually had to defend himself and LuthorCorp's efforts. It was a problem and it was a distraction.

So far, he'd found nothing with his investigations. Most of the city's criminal insane were back in Arkham Asylum, thanks in large part to the Justice League. Not that that proved anything about the League.

Lionel was suspicious of it. Clark had joined it out of gratitude and the desire to be accepted, he was sure. He might well be oblivious to anything going on under the surface, or, given his patterns of defiance, even deliberately oblivious, or worse.

Like Caesar's wife, most of them were above suspicion. Which made suspicion quite reasonable. But one of them was controversial, a vigilante, and Lionel didn't even need to feed the newspapers editorials about whether this particular member considered himself above the law, or whether he was too dangerously straddled between sanity and his own targets' madness. If any one of them was trying to undermine him, it would be this one.

He'd do it in careful steps. Clark's emotions would run both ways over this, and since he had so much trouble disciplining his emotions, Lionel would have to do it for him, to make sure that Clark would neutralize Batman for him.


	38. Chapter 38

Clark turned over and then lifted his head from the pillow. He could definitely hear the sound of somebody rapidly going through drawers and then strange mutterings. He tried to use his x-ray vision but whoever the searchers were, they were inconsiderately out of his line of vision, which meant he had to get out of bed to go find out what was happening.

He followed the sounds which were soon replaced by rustling and a kind of rhythmic crunching. When he turned the next corner, he could see directly into the kitchen. J'onn was sitting behind a pile of cookies and making fast inroads.

When he noticed Clark, he rapidly finished chewing and nodded a greeting. "It's hard to believe that you all take these so lightly."He gestured expansively at the cookies. "Delicious. A perfect food."

Clark wasn't sure if it would trigger a war between aliens if he actually took one and decided that it didn't matter since he wanted a sandwich instead. Rummaging in the refrigerator, he asked, "You don't have cookies on Mars?"

"Nothing like these."

Clark continued with turkey, ham, and a few slices of cheddar. He balanced another slice of tomato on top of those and wondered if peanut butter would be a good addition or just disgusting.

J'onn put down a cookie mid-bite. "Bruce Wayne told me as much as he knows about your story. That you were found in Smallville, Kansas, shortly after a meteor shower."

Clark nodded, eying J'onn over the top of his sandwich. "Clark, before my...before my people were destroyed, we had centers of learning of all kinds, including observatories. A meteor shower that did not originate in this solar system was an astonishing event and our scientists' analyses were widely disseminated.

"They traced the shower to a particular planet that orbited a red sun. Or rather, to the remnants of that planet."

Clark nodded slowly, trying to absorb both the statements and the concepts they opened up. J'onn seemed to recognize this and paused before continuing. "What was on that planet, how it was destroyed, or who lived there, we did not learn. But the meteor shower did not follow the patterns it would have had it been undirected. It was sent to this planet. Your arrival here was no accident."

So he wasn't just a piece of space debris that happened to land here. It wasn't random.

"They did not understand why this would be. Why would a destroyed planet's remains take this specific path? This and the other questions were a seven day's wonder and then replaced by other topics. But your presence, Clark, suggests the answer to that question. You were sent here to preserve you from your home's destruction." J'onn's voice deepened. "It may mean that like me, you are the last of your race. That is a loneliness. But I hope that we can both say that we have found others of our kind."

* * *

Lionel sat back and contemplated the cards he held. His suspicions that Batman was the one secretly trumping several of his better ones were becoming stronger. He'd eliminated the remnants of the city's elite as possible leaders of the increasingly frequent obstacles to his acquisitions. Then there were the feckless, such as Bruce Wayne, who'd unknowingly given him access to half the downtown area by handing over a pile of old papers that he'd "never actually looked at." Wayne had been far more interested in talking about when the country club's golf course might be restored.

Lionel had used his access to the city records to find properties of future value whose ownership had even the slightest possible ambiguity and manipulated the records to show that he had purchased them years ago. Sometimes it was as easy as deleting and replacing a computer file, other times it involved more intricate forgeries. But to his irritation, other documents were showing up to counter his claims, often as or more convincing than his own.

There wasn't a pattern that benefited a specific other person or interest. So far, the documents were all in favor of the original owners who hadn't the sense to establish their rights beyond all question. He knew that they weren't originals or recent rediscoveries because he'd destroyed those originals and made sure that the depositories where they were found had nothing of the sort. Somebody was sabotaging his operations. Somebody who either wasn't pursuing personal gain or was even more clever than Lionel in disguising it. Somebody who was able to break into systems and buildings with equal ease. Somebody who was doing a disconcertingly good job of tracking Lionel's movements and anticipating his next moves.

Fortunately, he had a weapon to hand.

Clark entered Lionel's office with an expectant and yet suspicious expression on his face and took a seat, looking Lionel right in the eye as he moved the chair to a more advantageous spot. Lionel chuckled to himself as he put his lightly folded hands on the desk.

"You miss Lex, don't you."

Clark's expression of suspicion deepened at Lionel's sympathetic tone. "This separation has been more difficult than I had anticipated. For both of you." Clark continued to eye him watchfully and Lionel could imagine Clark weighing each nuance in the words and the sentences. What was genuine and what feigned, where did the potential threats lie, what advantages might be gained, where, in the displays of strengths, were there hints of weaknesses? "That's why—provided that you're able to complete a task for me—I want to return to our earlier situation. I'll release Lex and of course that releases you from your...obligations to me."

Clark's face showed his emotions too easily at this prospect, but Lionel refrained from instinctively chiding him for this. Instead, he continued. "I need you to identify Batman for me."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Just identify him."

"But I don't know who he is! Nobody does."

"But you'll be able to find out. After all, you have access to him, you've worked together, you must have a thousand ways of finding out, even if he doesn't trust you enough to tell you. Or if you don't think that would work, you can learn who he does confide in." After letting that sink in for a moment, he got up, adding briskly, "How much time do you need? A week? That should be quite reasonable." He left a stunned and subdued Clark behind, then watched from the video camera as Clark rose and headed slowly to the elevators.

AN: And why the Muse decided to poke me with a sharp stick now, who knows? Sigh, I just do as I'm told. (Except by my boss or people like him.)


End file.
